The Holiday Killer (4 page)

"I'll need to see them." She looked to the quiet one. "Were you off the same ship?"

"Nah, this is my friend, Bruce," Jones interrupted. "He lives over on Hoddington Crescent. We only come down here for the crayfish."

Liz sighed, realizing that these men, though highly suspicious, were not likely to be of any danger. "Write down your names and contact numbers," she said, pulling a notebook from her pocket. "And I'll need to see some form of ID. If I need to get in contact with you, I want to know who you are, and where I can actually find you."

The men nodded, the louder one taking the notebook and hurriedly writing down names and addresses for the pair of them. He handed the scrawl back and she looked it over, then added some details from the passport and driver's licenses they offered as ID.

Satisfied that she what she needed if she wanted to find them again, she nodded to the two men and headed for her car, pulling her marshy shoes off on the way across the road. She had another pair on the back seat, and just planned to wear those until she could get these cleaned.

The journalists and civilians backed away from her stinky shoes as she passed, not willing to get the marshland mud on their clothes, while Liz made a mental note that carrying mucky shoes was an effective way to get through a crowd when she was in a hurry. She almost laughed as she pulled a plastic bag out of the back seat and dropped them into it.

What a way to start the day,
she thought sarcastically as she drove toward the police station, where the paperwork of the morning awaited her.
Bring on the holidays, indeed.

She rubbed at her face, sighing in frustration as she glanced in the rearview mirror, the throng of media still visible. Could this kid really be another Holiday victim? Or was there another psychopath on the loose? She didn't think it could be the Killer, unless he'd drastically changed his entire killing pattern, from victim to display, in the last—she thought back on the condition of the body—two days.

But there had yet to be a child taken this Easter, and she couldn't help but feel that this kid was a distraction, something to keep her busy while he sought a way around her defenses, to Jamie.

Maybe I'm just getting paranoid
, she thought to herself as she pulled into the station's car park.
Then again, that's the default emotion around here, these days.

Liz stood on the front step, looking the man in the eye. "I'm sorry, Mr. Michaels. But your son was found dead this morning."

The man stared at her, clearly unable to work out what was going on. "Russell? But … but he's meant to be at his cousins' house, for a sleepover." Then his face seemed to break, emotions playing across its surface. "I told him, I told him to stick to the open roads where there were plenty of people to see him. He didn't want to end up like his mother, but would he listen? No! And now he's gone too…" He began to sob, failing to hold himself together.

Liz felt very awkward, patting him on the shoulder. "Mr. Michaels, did you hear about your son going missing? That he hadn't made it to the sleepover?"

He shook his head. "No. I didn't hear anything from her. I thought he'd made it. He's eleven, well outside the age range of the Holiday Killer, I thought he'd be safe walking three blocks…"

Why not check on him anyway?
she thought, keeping her face straight, examining the man's body language for any sign of trickery. "I need to know the address of the house he was meant to be staying at," she said, whipping out her notebook and writing it down as he told her. "We will find the man responsible for your son's death, Mr. Michaels."

"You'd better," he said, tears leaking out of the corner of his eyes. "Because if I find the Holiday Killer first, you won't have enough to piece him back together."

"We don't know that this is his work—"

"Don't play dumb with me. It's Easter. There's been a child murdered. What else could it be?"

"We're working all the angles, Mr. Michaels."

"Work them fast. I want whoever it was caught."

"We do what we can." Liz nodded, turning to go, but stopped when an idea struck her. "Mr. Michaels, may I see your son's room, please? It may be important to the case."

The man hesitated, but stepped aside. Liz slipped in, waiting for Mr. Michaels to lead the way.

She was a bit nervous about what she would find in the boy's room. Would it be spotless, the sign of the Holiday Killer, just as Mike and Emma's rooms had been when they were taken this year? Would the killer clean the boy's room even if he wasn't taken from there?

They walked down the hallway, toward the room.

What if the kid's room
wasn't
cleaned? Did that point to another lapse in the Holiday Killer's pattern, did it mean the development of a new one, or did it mean the birth of a new serial killer in Matryville?

The man pushed open the boy's bedroom door, but hesitated in the doorway.

"This isn't the way he left it…"

Liz gently pushed past the man and stepped into the room, a churning in her gut telling her that she was not going to like what she found, no matter what it was.

The place was clean and tidy, not a sock out of place. Liz stepped very carefully, trying not to disturb anything.

"Is your son a tidy child?" she asked, pulling out her cell phone.

"Are you kidding?" the man asked, his eyes wide as he looked around the room. "He's eleven! If I didn't force him to have a bath, he wouldn't have one at all!"

"That's what I thought. No one comes in here." She smiled reassuringly at the man and headed for the front porch, holding her phone to her ear.

"Dispatch? This is Special Detective Donhowi. I need a forensic team to 1421 Liddell Crescent. Priority one, related to the Holiday Killer. Thanks, Denise." She hung up and turned to look at the man, who was speaking angrily down the phone to someone. He swore and hung up as she returned.

"I take it that was the person your son was meant to be staying with?"

"My wife's parents—they were meant to be minding him." The man looked at the phone in his hand, then sank down heavily at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. "This is insane," he muttered, shaking his head. "Why wouldn't Melinda or Carl call me to say he hadn't turned up? Why would he target Russell? What does a clean room have to do with my son's murder?" he demanded, aiming the last question at Liz.

She couldn't imagine any reason for the person looking after young Russell to
not
report him missing. But he was eleven, for hell's sake—what kind of parent would let an eleven-year-old out of their sight? And if he'd never shown up, it was even more reason for suspicion in terms of the family. They should have called his dad—and the police—immediately. Particularly with the Holiday Killer in the area.

"We've been working on that for six months, we don't know why he targets these kids specifically, but—"

"They said they thought I'd kept him home! Like I wouldn't call them and let them know he wasn't coming!" Mr. Michaels ranted, pacing in front of her. "I mean, there's a frigging murderer on the loose, of course I'd tell them if he wasn't coming—"

Liz raised her voice a little, to catch his attention. "I don't know, Mr. Michaels, but I will definitely be asking them that myself." Liz held up her hands, stopping the man's pacing. "This hasn't been released to the public yet, Mr. Michaels, and if it were to become public, it would severely hinder the chances of finding the man responsible." She looked him in the eye, trying to convey how serious she was. "But there are two markers for the Holiday Killer's appearance. The first, which the city knows, is that he leaves behind a token of the holiday. The second is that the bedroom of the kidnapped child is cleaned up to a spotless degree, as though covering something up."

She patted his hand as someone knocked on the front door. "The forensics team is going to go through Russell's room, but before they do, I want you to do something for me."

The man nodded and went to open the door. Liz stood behind him, waving to her father-in-law as he led the boys into the small apartment.

"What have you got, Elizabeth?" the man asked gruffly, shooting the other man a quick glance. "This the father?"

"Yes, this is John Michaels." She smiled at the man, who was sitting back in his seat in the kitchen. "Before the boys get into the room and disturb it, I want Mr. Michaels here to examine the contents and determine whether anything is missing."

Bill rubbed his forehead. "Liz, a child's clean room is nothing special. You can't just commandeer the forensics team to check a clean-up—"

"Trust me on this. Mr. Michaels? Can you come with me, please?" Liz took some latex gloves from one of the forensics guys and pulled them on, then led the defeated-looking man back down the hall to his son's room.

"Right. I want you to look around, without touching anything, and tell me if there is anything missing from the room. A toy, a poster, a piece of memorabilia—anything. Back at New Years', when he took poor Mike Rolland, he also took the boy's stuffed dinosaur, and it hasn't resurfaced yet. Neither has poor Emma Filch's unicorn, taken on Valentine's Day. We need to know if anything's missing from Russell's room as well—anything that we can identify."

The man nodded, stepping into the room and looking around
.

Liz's stomach was quiet, resigned to what was going on around her. Mike's stuffed animal was missing, and the theft might be another calling card, if she could prove a pattern. It might answer the question of whether Russell had actually been killed by the Holiday Killer. She didn't know the significance of the clean rooms, or the missing tokens, but if she could build a connection here, it would be a start.

This boy was chosen to offset the fact the killer couldn't get to Jamie. It was her fault this kid was dead, and she was going to have to live with that.

Bill's hand rested heavily on her shoulder, startling her from her thoughts. "Don't think about it," he murmured in her ear. "It'll break you. These kids need your head in the game now. I can see the guilt in your eyes; if you don't want Mr. Michaels seeing it and possibly attacking you, I suggest you square up. We'll talk about it later." He squeezed her shoulder and gently pressed past her, heading for the forensics team milling in the kitchen.

He's right
. She squared her shoulders and watched Mr. Michaels searching the room, trying not to disturb anything.
I have to do this. For them.

Mr. Michaels' gaze fell on the bed, and he straightened up, catching her attention. "His wooden train. Russell slept with it every night. Couldn't work out how the kid slept with a piece of wood in his face, but there you go."

"Can you describe the toy, please?" Sergeant Donhowi asked, standing just outside the door.

"Blue, red wheels. It was mine when I was a kid, and I gave it to Russell to fix his nightmares when he was a baby." The man turned away from the room, folding his hands over his chest. "Look, I meant to take Russell to my mother's today. Do you mind if I call her?"

"No, that's fine," Liz said, scribbling a quick description of the room into her notes and stepping out of the way of the forensics team.

The man nodded and stepped around the scientists now flooding the room. Liz looked at the forensics guys.

"I want this room covered with everything. Coat the place in fingerprint powder, anything that will help us catch this sick bastard." She waited until she heard affirmation from most of the crew before she left.

Something about the man's description of the train sounded familiar, but she couldn't work out where she'd seen it. She could see it in her mind's eye, sitting on a shelf along with a bright orange stuffed animal of some form, but she couldn't remember where she'd seen it. But it sat in the back of her mind, nudging, driving her to remember.

"Liz, where are you going?" Bill asked, sticking his head out of the kitchen, where he was watching Mr. Michaels.

"I'm going to go find out why the boy wasn't reported missing. He was meant to be at a sleepover, and eleven years old is a little young to be sneaking out on his grandparents. They didn't report him gone, or even check with the father. Something weird is going on."

Liz headed for the car, looking at the address in the notebook. She was going to sort this mess out now.

The drive three blocks to the Daffy house—the house where Russell had been meant to be spending the night—wasn't too bad, as there were still only a few people on the road. Liz pulled up outside the address on the paper, looking at the house. It was a small house, more an old cottage with a tiny yard and decaying roof that had clearly seen better days. There were children's bicycles and toys scattered in the front yard, with a pile of shoes on the edge of the porch, some of them without partners.

What a mess. If Jamie left his shoes out like this, there'd be no dessert for a week!
she thought, stepping over a baseball bat lying on the path.
If these people have something to do with Russell or the kids' murders, they'd definitely have the garden to hide their activities in.

She walked up the stairs to the front door, where she knocked a couple of times, glancing at the dying pot plants on the porch. The garden was alive and overgrowing, the grass up to her ankles, but the container plants were dead.

This place is so unkempt…
She knocked again. "This is Special Detective Donhowi. Open the door, please."
I don't want to have to break the flimsy wood down on you.

"Coming, hang on a minute," a lady's voice called from deep inside the house, and Liz shifted her weight to the other foot, waiting for the woman to open the door.

She glanced around the front yard again. Her attention jumped back to the door as it opened, revealing a small girl, six or seven years old, red hair up in a ponytail and a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth.

"Grandmum said to come in and have a seat."

Liz smiled at the girl and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She followed her into the living room, looking around. There was mess all over the floor—toys, clothes, crockery, and debris from a crumbling wall near the entryway—but it was easy to navigate. Three children appeared around the corner of the doorframe, taking one look at her gun and vanishing again, screaming and giggling.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," a woman said from behind Liz, making her jump. "My son took off with his girlfriend, leaving the kids with us for the weekend, and I had the three-year-old in the bath. Carl's out on errands, as usual, so he couldn't answer the door, but I think you made an impression on Belle." The woman wiped her hands on a towel hooked into her back pocket and offered it to Liz. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm here about Russell Michaels." Liz sat down, making herself at home. "I understand that he was here the last two nights?"

"He was meant to be, but he didn't show up. I figured my son-in-law decided not to let him out. Does it all the time, the fickle man. Still, can't blame him, with what happened to Lana."

"Your daughter? What happened to her?" Liz asked, scribbling quickly.

"Run down by a drunk driver a few years ago, when Russell was four." The woman shooed a pair of curious children from the room. "He normally doesn't let the kid out of his sight. I was surprised he agreed to the sleepover in the first place. He's so worried about someone not seeing Russell on the street, or another drunk driver hopping the curb and killing the poor child."