I Will Come for You (3 page)

Carter interrupts his thoughts. “What grade does she teach?”

“Fifth,” Graham says. “Isaac had her three years back.”

“That fits.”

“Yeah.”

Isaac was in the woman’s classroom, under her influence during a time when his son was made vulnerable by his mother’s mental deterioration and their divorce. His son never showed signs of abuse and Graham knows what to look for, but even experts miss clues.

“What do you make of the baby Jesus?”

Graham tries to shake off his worry for his son. He knows the statistics. Teacher abuse of her students is rare; media attention makes it seem more rampant. It’s never happened in King’s Ferry,
nor on Vancouver Island, that Graham knows about; maybe not even in Canada at all. So, he’ll look for another explanation. For an acceptable reason a twenty-six year old woman would have in her possession clothes fitting a school boy.

“The baby Jesus,” he says, anchoring himself in the moment.

They found a small figurine of the Christ child clutched in Iverson’s hand. The King’s Ferry Killer always leaves an icon of the Christian faith with his victims and Graham and the department have to dig through the victim's life in order to find the connection. Some continue to puzzle them. Others are obvious. The object is the only attempt by the killer to communicate with authorities.

“My first thought?” Carter continues. “I wondered if she was pregnant.”

Graham nods. “Could be. And maybe the killer saw her purchase a pregnancy test. Or works at a clinic.”

Carter rattles through his notes. “No pregnancy test was found. No date in her calendar book indicating a doctor’s appointment.”

“The M.E. will let us know.”

“It’s hard for a woman to sit on that kind of news,” Carter says. “We can find out a lot faster if we ask around.”

“You know that from experience?” Carter is single and as far as Graham knows, not a father.

“My sisters told anyone who would listen,” he says.

“Are your sisters married?”

“Yeah.”

“So maybe Iverson would keep a lid on it.” But Graham shrugs. Why wait for tomorrow

if
they can know in twenty minutes. “Ask about it.”

“Straight out?”

Graham nods. “We’re running on negative time. Pose it as a question, but if you pick up on reluctance, work it.”

The door opens again and a middle-aged Asian man, Tong Oakes, joins them on the patio.

“She’s ready to go,” he says.

Graham nods. “Stick to protocol.”

“Of course,” Oakes agrees. 

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and stares past the detectives and into the fog rolling off the ocean. Graham senses his hesitation. He’s only known Oakes to be a cautious, methodical man. The best at what he does.

“What’s on your mind?” Graham prods.

“He’s going to kill again,” Oakes says.
“Soon.”

Graham lets the words settle. He knew this, too, the moment he saw the wound. And the need for a smoke, to feel the nicotine hit his blood and sing through his veins, becomes stronger.

“What did you find?”

“Anger.
Increased pressure to the wound. The exact measurements will be taken at the lab, but,” Tong adds, “the cut is deeper. Preliminary, I’d say he hit bone this time.”

He knows Tong is talking about the spine, describing a near decapitation without going in for the fanfare, but he presses to be sure.

“Are we talking a nick?”

Oakes shakes his head.
“More than that but less than a complete severing of the spinal column. There’s more than soft tissue intact.”

“That’s a lot of anger,” Carter says.

“So maybe his behavior is escalating,” Graham poses. “Or maybe he knew his victim this time.”

“If the hair proves conclusive,” Tong says, “and doesn’t belong to a known subject, I’d go with him knowing the victim. He was too distracted to keep the scene clean.”

Chapter Three

Sunday 7:35 am

The ferry was overloaded. A sign above the wheel house claimed responsibility for 305 passengers and 57 autos. Natalie did an approximate count: 350 people. She thought of recent tragedies, in the Philippines, in Greece, where ferries burdened with too much human cargo capsized. She began to word tomorrow’s headlines:
Ferry Headed for Victoria Sinks, 300 Perish
. She’d always been an optimistic person; she didn’t understand her focus on death; didn’t like how the thoughts crept into her mind and then seemed to play out in life. She didn’t believe in ESP, in parallel worlds, in messages from beyond the grave. She didn’t believe in ghosts. Yet, she’d known of her father’s cancer days before the diagnosis. At dinner, she’d looked up from her meal, intending to address a comment her father had made, when she saw a pale image of him standing beside the real thing. This ghost image had bottomless, mournful eyes and skin mottled by what Natalie would come to know as an aggressive melanoma.

She
wanted
to believe it was a hallucination. Her physician assured her that she was suffering from the shock of discovering a dead body. A criminal death. The man in the woods was murdered. Her doctor told her that the human mind often worked without our consent, weaving connections to other deaths we may have experienced. In Natalie's case, the death of her brother.

Tragedy was stacked against her. There was so much of it in her life it was beginning

to impact her ability to reason. That she understood.

Most people have nightmares after they fall asleep, but Natalie's choose daylight, when they had her full attention. That made sense to her. She could accept more easily that she had post traumatic stress than a supernatural gift. Her mind was simply recreating one incident over and over, dressing it differently. Everything she saw didn't come to fruition, and those that did were coincidence.

But then her father had come home with the diagnosis, and three months later, died. And now Natalie doubted even her ability to discriminate between reality and the images concocted by her mind.

Like now, as she looked over the strait, she saw it littered with the bloated bodies of fellow passengers. And it seemed very convincing. She recognized the elderly man who parked his Impala in front of her pickup; the Japanese tourist who’d asked her to snap a picture of him and his wife; the woman who’d run past her earlier, frantically calling, “Michael! Michael!” Natalie looked among them for herself.

She
has light around her, like the pictures of Jesus. Michael doesn't think she’s from the bible, though. She wears clothes like everybody else, pants and shoes, and she’s smiling. All the pictures in his children's bible have people with flat mouths. None of them look right at you.

Michael steps closer, tries to put his hand into the light, but it disappears. He tries to find the
sun in the sky, but all he sees are clouds. His mother said it was getting ready to rain. She made him pull on a hat and scarf and now he’s hot and itchy. He turns around on the heels of his brand-new light-up high tops, looking for any place the sun might be peeking through, and catches a glimpse of star bursts dancing over his head. It happens sometimes, when he moves too fast and gets dizzy. He spins himself over to the rail and stands next to the lady, thinking the

light
might come back.

The
bow of the ferry thumped over a patch of choppy water. Natalie didn't get sea sick, but her stomach did a somersault and she held more tightly to the rail.

Natalie needed answers about her brother's death. She’d been dreaming about Steven more than usual. Almost every night since her father died. The dreams didn't last long, but slipped through her REM sleep several times a night. Steven holding up a
snapping turtle and laughing as their father focuses the camera; Steven splashing through the surf, shoes on, his head bent and searching; she can't remember what he was looking for only that she’d followed in his wake, a sense of urgency moving her forward. In the last moment of the dream, Steven appeared to her as he was the last time she’d seen him, in his casket, hands folded over his chest. Only his eyes were open and scared. Pleading.

Steven lived exactly ten years. The day he’d disappeared they picked up his birthday cake from the bakery and wrapped his presents in Batman paper. Her father walked into their rented house in King’s Ferry mid-afternoon carrying a large box she later discovered was a telescope. Kids from the neighborhood, whom Steven and Natalie had played with the past three summers, started ringing their doorbell at 2 pm, but her brother and his best friend, Lance Marquette, had
not shown up. Her mother started the games while her father went looking. The next day, the Royal Mounted Police began a search that included dragging the shallow water of the bay. But it was Natalie who’d found Steven. And that was where everything became fuzzy. She knew she’d found her brother and his friend; her father had told her so. She even remembered the police asking her questions, but not their exact words and not the answers she’d given them. Natalie and her parents left Vancouver Island, brought Steven home for burial, and never returned.

She drew a de
ep breath and loosened her hands on the railing. The wind picked up and

she
let the mist from the strait bathe her face. She wished she could wash the soot from her memories as easily, see them clearly for the first time, cut through their cloying bands and free herself, but only knowledge would do that. She lived with Steven's death every day, connected to it in a way she didn't understand. She wanted to change that.

"You're going to get all wet."

Natalie looked down. A little boy, maybe seven years old, bundled in wool and Gortex.

"I hope so."

He frowned. She’s a grown up and his mother just told him to stand back from the rail or he'd get soaked.

"You want to get wet?"

"Absolutely," Natalie agreed. "Don't you?"

It was too late if he didn't. His face was covered in a film of mist and a layer stuck to his clothes.

He nodded, put his hands on the rail and hoisted himself up so that he could look over at the water.

"You see any whales?" he asked.

"Not yet."

"They migrate now.
In families. The babies swim with their mothers."

"That’s right," Natalie said. "But I haven't seen any.
”

"Michael!"

The sharp voice was accompanied by a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Get off that railing and come over here. I told you not to get too close."

The boy lets his feet drop to the deck, but the disappointment on his face lifted to a look of wide astonishment. Natalie followed his gaze.

"A whale!
A whale!" he cried. He jumped up and down and shook off his mother's hand. "Do you see the babies?"

Natalie didn't. She watched the arc of the whale's tail, the spray it shot through the air, and then its plunge back beneath the water. Her heart beat a little faster.

"Beautiful," she murmured.

"Powerful."

A man filled the space beside her. She felt his presence as much as she heard his voice. It was not a pleasant sensation; her skin felt slightly burned, even through the layers of her clothing.

"That's a gray whale. Not the biggest in the ocean,
nor the prettiest, but she can carry a tune better than Pavarotti.”

Natalie turned, the muscles in her neck resisting the motion, and let her eyes fall on him.
A thin face, smooth skin and hair the color of milk. His eyes, a strange non-color, were full of recognition.

"Natalie Forrester," he said. "It's good to see you again."

"I don't know you," she said, though something inside her shifted, caught on the timber of his voice, the eyes the color of running water.

"Yes, you do," he chided. "It was a long time ago, and only once, wasn't it?"

She nodded. She remembered his eyes. "I was eight."

"Terrible to meet under those circumstances."

He’d worked with her father and came to the house in King’s Ferry the day after Steven's body was recovered. Her father refused to accept a package from him, had closed the door on the man.

"You're not a friend," Natalie said and turned back to the water.

"No." Sadness made his voice heavy. "It would be a mistake for you to think that."

"How do you know who I am?"

"I can see the girl you were," he said. "But you're right. That wouldn't have been enough. Your mother told me you were coming.”

Natalie swung around to stare at him.
"My mother?"

"Yes. She knew where to find me. I haven't left the island, not in all this time."

"My mother didn't tell me about you."

"No. She should have. This would be easier."