The Christmas Killer (24 page)

Jake followed Mills out of the interview room and back to the detective bureau. ‘Don’t you dare ever walk in on one of my interviews. I was about to get a confession, and you screwed it up.’

‘Look at yourself,’ said Mills. ‘You look like a fucking mad man!’

‘I’m going back in.’

He tried to shove past Mills, but Mills held him off. It took everything Jake had to not act out the flashes that played through his mind – flashes of him hip-tossing Mills to the floor and pinning him there with a knee pressed between his shoulder blades. He let Mills push him until he was facing a small mirror on the wall.

‘Look at yourself!’ Mills said again.

Jake saw. His hair was wild. The blood from the cut on his hand had soaked through the towel and there were dark stains on his cuffs. Specks of blood and rivers of sweat made his white shirt see-through in places. Streaks of blood were on his cheeks and around his lips from where he had unconsciously rubbed his face during the interrogation.

‘Shit,’ said Jake, and he looked at his hands.

‘Yeah,’ said Mills.

Jake closed his eyes, his mind filling with a rushing sound like the drone of an aeroplane mid-flight. He had
chosen
to punch the vending machine; no one had made him. He had
chosen
to lose the plot against Harper, going after him like a psycho; no one had made him do that either.

He was losing it, and he had no one to blame but himself.

‘How much damage did I do?’

Mills shrugged. ‘You did a tough interview. But it’s a quadruple homicide. You’ll probably get away with it. Another five minutes, and he’d have walked on a dozen different technicalities.’

Jake looked at Mills, whose face was creased with concern. Mills was the precinct joker. Seeing him look so serious, Jake realized how close he had come to a line he had vowed never to cross again.

‘Go home, Austin,’ said Mills. ‘I’ll finish up with the councilman. You hang with the family and unwind a bit. Unless there’s another murder overnight, I don’t want to see you back here until after lunch tomorrow.’

Jake wanted to go home by way of a bar, but he knew one beer would probably lead to five. He was also still relatively new in town, which meant that he was thin on drinking buddies whose conversation could drown out the dialogue his head was having with itself. So he drove straight home. He stopped in his driveway and sat in the car for about ten minutes, trying to let the tension and anger drain from him. The day had been a rough one; he didn’t want to bring it home with him.

He had a feeling his family would have had a rough day of their own.

When he got inside, Leigh gasped at his bandaged hand.

‘It’s fine,’ he told her, ‘just a little gash.’

She removed the tea towel and grimaced. ‘It’s more than a little gash,’ she said. ‘You need stitches.’ She looked him in the eye and stroked back his hair. ‘I’ll clean it up for you.’

She reached up to one of the high cupboards and took out a small canvas first-aid satchel. She removed some gauze and cut it into neat squares. Next she cut
some strips of adhesive plaster. But just then there was a loud wailing from upstairs. They looked at each other, barely breathing. Jake knew they were thinking the same thing.
Sometimes he goes back to sleep …

But no. The wailing built to a crescendo.

Jake sighed. Leigh shook her head. ‘You are not picking up Jakey with this bloodied hand – you’ll traumatize him!’ She gave him a weary smile before going upstairs.

After he’d bandaged himself up as best he could, Jake sat in the living room and watched television for a while, trying to unwind. But the news was all about the Christmas Killer, Littleton’s first serial.

Four victims, but Jake tried to put it in perspective. By serial killer standards, the Christmas Killer was small fry.

Has he killed before? Have I just failed to spot a pattern?
Tomorrow morning he would go through all the old files on homicides, see if anything emerged. Then he remembered: he was at home tomorrow morning. He’d phone the idea in, let Mills handle it.

His mind drifted to Orville Lynn Majors, Indiana’s only other serial killer. Majors had been a nurse at a hospital in Clinton, and during his two years there the death rate more than quadrupled. When he was dismissed in 1995, the death rate returned to normal. Majors was convicted of six killings but was suspected of more than 120.

‘Dad!’

It was Faith, and she was shaking him. ‘Dad, Mom
has been calling you for like five minutes. Dinner’s ready.’

Jake snapped awake with a start, mingled and mangled images of Majors and Mitch Harper fading from his mind. This was bad: he was with his family, and he was obsessing on serial killers. He really needed to get a grip on himself. Following his daughter back to the airy kitchen, where his family were already seated, he saw his mother at the head of the table. Faith settled into the seat beside her, and Jakey’s high chair was next. On the other side of the table was his space, while Leigh was on her feet, draining spaghetti.

‘I see you’ve decided to join us,’ she joked.

‘Sorry, I …’ Jake thought about explaining but decided not to. It wasn’t exactly suitable dinnertime talk.

There was silence for a while as everyone tucked into the food. Jake looked around at his family and it felt like he wasn’t really part of it. Like he was hovering above them. There was a bite of heat to the bolognese sauce, as Leigh always added a few chillies. Normally he loved her cooking, but today even the chillies didn’t taste good. It was like all of his senses had been turned off.

Jeanette broke the silence with a verse of ‘White Christmas’. ‘Bruce loved that song,’ she announced to no one in particular at the end.

‘Mum, can I be excused?’ asked Faith.

‘We’re a family,’ said Leigh steadily; ‘we eat together.’

Faith looked daggers at her but said nothing.
Jeanette chose this moment to launch into ‘Silent Night’. Faith turned from her in disgust. In the process she knocked over a glass, and milk spilt on the table.

‘Faith, be more careful,’ said Leigh.

‘I
am
being careful!’ yelled Faith. This set off Baby Jakey.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Leigh said with a tut.

Jake heard all the discordant harmonies in the cacophony, but he didn’t react. No irritation that another family dinner had descended into the kind of domestic chaos that he knew so well. No exasperation that his beloved daughter was developing a world-class talent for finding reasons to rage at anyone in the room. He realized he was feeling nothing. He told himself that after the day he’d had – the flare-up at the station, the near-miss with Harper – he was just drained.

After dinner he sat with Leigh for a while on the porch. It was freezing but quiet. Both of them wore overcoats, their breath coiling around their heads with every exhale. Without the noise, Jake felt a little better.

‘What punishment did you decide on for Faith?’ he asked.

‘She’s going to buy Jakey some new toys from her allowance,’ said Leigh.

‘And that’s it?’

‘That’s it. Her actions have consequences, and she’ll live with those consequences. But we’re not going to punish her beyond that.’

‘And what if I disagree?’

Leigh laughed and lightly punched his upper arm. ‘You need to be a fully functioning member of this family to get a vote. Trust me; I know what I’m doing.’

Jake tried to return her laugh, but he couldn’t. He had to admit his domestic life functioned despite his lack of engagement with some aspects of it. And that was because Leigh picked up his slack. Then he thought about it a bit more. She was coping with a new baby, a move to a new state and her crazy mother-in-law.

‘I suppose it’s out of the question for you to get an hour free tomorrow morning?’ she asked.

‘For you? Anything.’

‘I’m not joking, Jake. I need to take Faith out to get her some new winter clothes.’

‘I have the morning off.’

Leigh stared at him for a long moment, clearly trying to figure out if he was joking. When she realized he wasn’t, her face lit up. ‘Perfect. I’ll take Faith into Indianapolis and we’ll spend the morning doing some Christmas shopping. It’ll be good for us to get some quality girl-time. And you can watch Jakey.’

I’d rather catch a killer
, he thought. But he kept that to himself. Instead, he echoed her: ‘Perfect.’

Faith had sulked the night before when she had heard she was to go shopping with her mother, but when the morning came, she was up early and clearly excited. The moody teen had been shaken off like a wet raincoat, leaving the sweet little girl Jake had known for the first eleven years of her life. At breakfast she chatted inanely and tickled Jakey under his chin. Jake had been about to stop her, but he saw that the baby was delighted to be getting attention from his older sister. In fact, Jake thought this was the first time he’d seen Jakey laugh properly. It was like music.

At nine Leigh and Faith left, and Jake was on his own – apart from his mother and his baby son.
This should be easy
, he thought.

Jake was in the middle of reading the paper’s football coverage when the baby began to cry. He put down the paper, picked up Jakey and ran through his mental checklist, hoping that basic childcare had not changed much since he had done it with Faith. First he burped him, then he rubbed his back. He bounced him on his knee and even tried to sing. But then he got the smell.

Obvious – why hadn’t he thought of it? Some detective he was. It was not at all pleasant, but Jake had been to four crime scenes in the past week, so changing a nappy was nothing. The baby immediately settled and was soon sleeping gently in his Moses basket. Jake carried him into the lounge. His mother was sitting there when he walked in.

‘How are you feeling this morning, Mom?’ he asked in a breezy tone.

She muttered a wordless reply and didn’t look up. So he let it go. He could kill an hour with the newspaper.

But when he turned back to the football something about the report jarred. He looked at the date on the paper. It was two days old. He threw it away – but calmly, so as not to set off Jakey. The television was tuned to CNN. That and Fox News were the only news channels his cable subscription included. He saw his own image appear on the screen – thankfully, it was not the incident with Ford.

His mother muttered, ‘Be more careful.’

The next item was the Springfield asylum story. By now Jake could almost recite the news word-for-word, but his mother turned the volume up.

On screen a team in white boiler suits was combing the grounds of the asylum, and all construction had come to a halt. Nothing new had been found, and the forensics weren’t back yet on the two skeletons they’d unearthed. Both seemed to be young children, a girl of
around seven and a boy a bit older. In the absence of facts, the reporters had to speculate.

‘A number of people have come forward to tell their stories,’ the reporter at the scene told the anchor. His face was arranged in a typical Isn’t-this-horrible? grimace, but his eyes could not contain his professional glee at such a discovery. ‘All the stories are depressingly similar. Witness after witness has told me about being abused by a Fred Lumley, who was the warden of the asylum. Mr Lumley is now the subject of an FBI manhunt.’

The camera cut to one of the witnesses.

‘He took away my childhood,’ cried the woman. ‘He raped me repeatedly, from the age of eight until I was eleven.’

The reporter nodded sympathetically, then asked, ‘Did anyone know?’

‘I’m sure others knew, but no one did anything to stop him.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

‘Everyone was afraid of him,’ said the woman with a weak shrug.

‘And what effect did the abuse have on you? On your life?’ the reporter asked.

The woman sniffed before answering the reporter’s loaded questions. ‘I tried to commit suicide twice. I became an alcoholic, and I’ve never been able to hold on to a job. That man didn’t just take my childhood; he stole my whole life.’

Another witness, a man this time, told of being raped on his ninth birthday, and about taking an overdose when he was fourteen.

The report cut back to the anchor’s live feed. ‘The FBI is now coordinating a nationwide manhunt for the warden, Fred Lumley. He has been missing for thirty years or more, and they assume he will have changed his name and his identity. Authorities now believe Lumley disappeared because he knew that the abuse of the children in his care was about to be uncovered. He is also the chief suspect in the murder of the two children whose remains were discovered last week. FBI experts have created an image of what Lumley might look like now.’

Jeanette seemed almost in a trance as she stared at the screen. Jake found that he couldn’t tear his gaze away either.

The screen filled with two black and white pictures: Lumley how he used to be and how the Feds’ computer predicted he would look today. There was something familiar about the face, but that was the danger with reconstructions. They used common elements of all faces. Jake looked hard, with a relaxed mind, for about thirty seconds – long enough to be satisfied he did not know Lumley, then sat back. His mind was turning.

Maybe he’s moved to Littleton and started killing again
, he thought.
The way things are going, it’s not that far-fetched.

Baby Jakey woke with a whimper. That’s how it started. Jake was over straight away, rocking the Moses
basket gently. That only seemed to make it worse. It wasn’t long before Jake found himself in the middle of a storm of noise, as the baby opened his throat and let out a full-blooded howl. The volume took Jake by surprise. He realized with a start that this was the first time he had been in charge of his son. Leigh was always there to take him when the crying started.

He picked Jakey out of the little basket and cradled him in his arms. But the baby arched his back and nearly fell to the floor. So Jake hugged him tight to his chest, hoping the sound of his own heart would somehow calm him. But either his heart was on strike, or it was muffled by his shirt and jacket, because Jakey still struggled. His face was turning red, and his eyes were watery. The sound of his screaming was tearing through Jake’s head.

The band of pressure was back.

Jake went through everything. He offered the baby a bottle, but Jakey turned his head and refused it. He checked, but the nappy didn’t seem to need changing. He rubbed Jakey’s back, burped him gently, bounced him, rocked him. He even sang to him. Nothing worked. The baby screamed louder.

He looked to his mother. Jeanette had turned up the volume on the television.

Thanks, Mom. That’s what was missing.

Jake pulled the remote out of her hand and killed the sound. ‘I need your help here,’ he said.

‘Yes, dear,’ she said gently. ‘Is there a problem?’

Jake just stood there, with his screaming son in his arms, and looked at her. She wasn’t being sarcastic. ‘Jakey’s crying.’

‘He’s a baby. That’s what they do. But if you really must have him quiet, maybe Leigh can help?’

Jakey screamed louder. Jake wondered if, intuitively, he had picked up on the mention of his mother’s name.

‘She’s in the city with Faith,’ said Jake, almost shouting to be heard over his son’s cries. ‘What should I do?’

His mother looked at him for a moment, then smiled. ‘Perhaps he’s hungry?’ she suggested.

‘I’ve tried.’

‘His nappy might … ?’

‘I’ve tried everything! What did you use to do when I was a baby?’

She looked at him blankly.

‘Never mind!’
I thought this stuff was supposed to be instinctive to mothers?

The pounding in his head was back. It was going to be a long morning.