The Border: The Complete Series (11 page)

“It's raining, boss. Just started as I was coming in the door.”

Today

Looking up from the paperwork on his desk, Alex watched as Jane made her way across the office with a paper bag from the local diner. She was smiling, he noticed; she always smiled when she arrived.

“I know you said you didn't want anything,” she continued, stopping in front of him and reaching into the bag, “but I couldn't just leave you out entirely. Didn't feel right.” Taking a bagel from the bag, she set it down on the desk. “It's cinnamon. That's the type you like, isn't it?”

“It is,” he replied, trying to force a smile as he took the bagel and set it aside. “Thank you, I'll eat it later.”

“I was thinking,” she continued, heading to her own desk, “that maybe we need to start going door to door, start asking around and see if anyone saw anything on the night Mel was killed. I mean, someone has to have noticed
something
being a little off, don't they? Something like this can't happen without creating ripples in the rest of town, and we should get moving fast, so everything's still fresh in people's minds. I read a study last week that said there's an almost 50% drop-off in factor recognition after the first twenty-four hours.”

“Factor recognition?”

“The ability to recall a memory that seemed insignificant at the time, but which might take on new meaning when it's paired with information that has been subsequently acquired.”

He stared at her for a moment. “You don't say?”

She nodded. “That's why we need to get out and ask people what they remember.”

“Maybe,” he muttered, looking down at a photo of Mel's dead body, taken during the autopsy when her chest was open. “You can do that, if you think it might help. I want to sit here and sift through things a little longer. Get it all straight in my head. There's something to be said for a slower, more old-fashioned approach.” Setting the photo down, he picked up another, this time showing the wound through which Mel's heart had been extracted.

“What do you think he did with it?” Jane asked after a moment.

“Did with what?”

“The heart.”

“I have no idea,” he replied. “What kind of monster would do something like this?”

“We need to think like him,” she continued.

Frowning, he turned to her.

“We need to think like the killer,” she continued, reaching into one of her desk drawers and pulling out a psychology textbook, which she slid over to him. “Have you read Schoepenhauser, Kallerman and Turister?”

“Have I -” Alex frowned. “Who, what and who now?”

“They're three really forward-thinking forensic psychologists from Mannheim in Germany,” she explained. “They bring a Jungian approach to criminal psychology, and one of the things they talk about in that book, in chapter eight I think, is the need to view the crime through the lens of the killer's mind.”

Alex paused. “What lens?”

“We need to get into his mind and try to see the world the way he sees it,” she continued. “I've read around the subject extensively, it's a bit like profiling, except you have to open yourself up to all these other possibilities and try to work out the thought processes that someone like this might follow. You have to get into the killer's skin and try to think they way they think.”

“How in God's name is a sane person supposed to do that?” he asked, clearly horrified by the idea.

“You just have to use your imagination. Like,
imagine
yourself standing over Mel, having just cut her heart out.” Taking an apple from her bag, she held it up. “It's still warm,” she continued, “and there's blood everywhere, and she's dead. What are you going to do with the heart? On a purely practical level, I mean.”

“Jesus,” Alex replied, “I don't know. I don't want to think like that. It's not right.”

“He put her into the dumpster,” she added, staring at the apple, “which would have required two hands, and most likely he took the heart out first, so where did he put the heart while he was lifting the body?”

“I don't know,” Alex replied. “Does it matter?”

“He must have put it somewhere,” she continued. “It's a practical consideration. Did he just put it on the ground for a moment? Did he put it in a bag? This guy obviously knew he was going to take the heart, but -” She paused. “And
why
did he put the body in the dumpster? He displayed Caitlin Somers almost like a piece of art, like he was proud of her, but then he tossed Mel into the dumpster like he just wanted to get rid of her as quickly as possible. Doesn't that strike you as being a little odd, like he went from one extreme to the other?”

She waited for a reply, but Alex seemed lost in thought, staring at the photos on his desk as if he hadn't heard a word she'd said, or as if he was
trying
not to hear.

“Are you okay?” she asked finally.

No reply.

“Boss?”

“Huh?” Turning to her, he frowned. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Me? Hell, yeah. Why wouldn't I be okay?”

“You just seem...” She paused, before realizing that there was no point trying to dig too deep, not with a man like Alex Gordon. “Nothing. I just thought you seemed a little out of it, that's all. But don't worry, I'll just get on with my ideas, and you get on with yours, and I'm sure we'll... I dunno, meet in the middle, something like that.”

“I'm just thinking about the son-of-a-bitch who did this,” he replied. “Mark my words, as God is my witness, we're going to...” His voice trailed off for a moment. “I mean, we'll find him. We'll get him.”

“Of course we will,” she told him.

“We have better tests we can run,” he continued, “more avenues we can explore. The bastard slipped through our fingers last time, but now...” He stared at the photo of Mel for a moment longer. “Nine years,” he added finally. “Nine long years. What the hell has he been doing all that time? And why did he suddenly decide to kill again? Why now? Why her?”

“That's what I was wondering about too,” she replied. “Maybe if we -”

“I'll be back soon,” he said suddenly, getting to his feet and heading to the door.

“I was hoping we could -”

“Later, Jane. You get on with your Mannheim... German... books.”

Before she could ask where he was going, he was out of the room. Listening to the sound of him heading along the hallway, she realized something was definitely wrong with Alex, even if he wouldn't admit it. After a moment, she got to her feet and headed over to his desk, to take another look at the photos from the crime scene. As she did so, lost in thought, she took a bite from her apple.

***

“Jesus,” Alex muttered a few minutes later as he lit a cigarette in the yard behind the police station. Taking a long, slow drag, he looked up at the dull gray sky and tried to empty his head of all the thoughts that had been bursting through, one after another, since Mel's body had been found.

“Don't need a bunch of German psychologists telling me how to do my job,” he muttered, feeling a little antsy as he thought back to everything Jane had said. “Just need to focus on the goddamn case.”

After a moment, he closed his eyes.

“Calm,” he whispered. “Peace.”

In the distance, a lorry was reversing. He could hear the hum of morning traffic, too, and a moment later someone sounded a car horn. Light rain was falling, but not too much. Everything seemed normal and calm, and he lost his thoughts for a moment in the tranquility of it all. A perfect town, running perfectly, with everyone safe and happy. It was possible, he told himself. He could deliver.

“Don't you think she might be right?” a female voice asked suddenly.

He froze, not wanting to acknowledge the words.

“You should be in there,” the voice continued, “working with her, not feeling sorry for yourself. It's been nine years and you still haven't caught the man who did this to me. One hundred and eight months, more than three thousand days, more than seventy thousand hours. Don't take this the wrong way, Mr. Gordon, but what the hell have you been doing all that time?”

“Calm,” he whispered again. “Peace.”

She laughed.

“You're not real,” he added under his breath. “You're not really here.”

“Seriously? Can't you even look at me?”

He squeezed his eyes tighter shut. So tight, they hurt.

“Are you a man?” she asked. “Come on. Look.”

He waited for her to go away.

“Look,” she said again, sounding a little closer this time.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw Caitlin standing on the other side of the yard, her scarred and damaged body just about visible in the shadows.

“That's better,” she added. “You don't get to stop looking at my injuries until you catch the man responsible.”

Not too far off, on the other side of the wall at the yard's far end, a car rolled past slowly.

“You can strut about all you like,” Caitlin continued, fixing him with an unblinking gaze, “and you can talk about justice until you're blue in the face, but nothing's going to happen unless you find him. If you'd caught him nine years ago, he wouldn't have killed that woman at the bar the other night, would he? He'd be locked away in a cell somewhere, unable to cause any more pain to this town. He'd have been cut out of the fabric of Bowley's life like a tumor. That's what you are, isn't it? A surgeon who takes bad things out of the town's body, and a priest who makes things better later. The people of this town rely on you to keep them safe, so if you think about it, Mel Armitage's blood is on your hands.”

He shook his head.

“It isn't?” she asked, with a faint smile. “Really?”

“I'm going to find the killer,” he whispered.

“Before or after he kills again?”

He paused.

“What people need,” Caitlin continued, “is someone who'll keep them safe. Do
you
keep them safe? Or do you let murderers get away with their crimes? Mel probably thought this was a nice little town, the kind of place where a woman wouldn't have to look over her shoulder every five minutes. She probably came here to escape the horror and violence of the rest of the world, and now she's dead on a slab with a hole in her chest. It's too late for her, she's gone, but the next victim is walking around in town somewhere and she still
can
be saved, if only you get your finger out of your ass.”

“I'm trying,” he whispered.

“What was that?”

“I'm trying.”

She laughed. “Say it again.”

“I'm trying.” His voice was trembling this time.

“Then you're doing a really pathetic job,” she told him. “The man who killed me is still out there. Can you imagine what a sick person he must be? What kind of man would stab a poor innocent young woman and then cut out her heart?” She reached up and touched the bloodied hole on her chest. “What did he do with it? You never even found it. Whatever he wanted, he got away with it. He decided to kill me, and he did, and you never troubled him, you probably never even got close. How the hell do you sleep at night?”

“I don't.”

“Good. You shouldn't. You should be working every moment that God sends until you find this man, because he's going to do it again.”

“I know.”

“Who do you think'll be his next victim? It'll be someone from the town, someone you know. Any ideas?” She paused. “Maybe it'll be a child this time. An innocent, angelic little child.”

He shook his head.

“No?” She smiled. “Why not? How do you know?”

“I'm going to stop him,” he replied, taking a step forward as the rain continued to fall. “You have to believe me, justice -”

“So what's different?” she asked, interrupting him. “What are you going to do now, that you couldn't do back then? Come on -” She snapper her fingers a couple of times. “Quick, tell me. Don't be vague. I want details.”

“We have new techniques,” he stammered. “He must have made a mistake, maybe he left some DNA behind.”

“You had those techniques nine years ago. Details, man.”

“We have new ideas.”

“Jane has new ideas,” she spat back at him. “You don't understand them, though, do you? What's wrong, are you too stupid?”

“I take an old-fashioned approach, I admit -”

“Oh God,” she said with a faint smile, “are you really
that
desperate? Are you hoping for some DNA to magically show up and lead you right to him? Don't you think he might just be a little smarter than that? In fact, don't you think that's the real problem here? For all that you strut about, promising to look after people, you're no match for this guy. You're no match for anyone. The killer is smarter than you, he's running rings around all your efforts to catch him and he's going to keep doing that for as long as you climb to your job. Even your partner's smarter than you.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I'm going to get him.”

“Maybe you should turn the case over to Jane,” she suggested. “Maybe she's got a better chance of solving this thing without you. You just get in the way.”