An Unkindness of Ravens Read online

  “You really feel that way?” she asked, her voice much lower now, and she was afraid to hear his answer. He looked out the window and she felt at once this wasn’t a good sign. He looked back and nodded slowly,

  “I guess I do,” he said.

  Sarah sat down, suddenly more tired than she could remember. Marcus stood there for a long time and neither of them said anything. At last he said,

  “I’m going to go stay at my sister’s place tonight.” Sarah looked at him, but it seemed pointless to try to argue this. Perhaps a little distance right now was what was required. It might look a whole lot different in the morning when they were both more rested.

  “If you think that’s best,” she said. Though she didn’t intend it to be catty, it came out that way, and she couldn’t muster the will to correct it.

  “I’ll call you,” he said as he went out the door. The apartment had never been so silent as it was now. Sarah lay down on the couch, numb.

  Sleep was a long time coming, but it did finally arrive. It was restless and she woke with a jerk periodically. The last time she felt cold and pulled a throw from the back of the sofa down over herself. Forty-five minutes after that she was awake. It was a new day already, and though she was not ready for it, she could at least be glad the last one was over with.

  Sarah took a quick shower, charging her dead phone as she did, and then had some coffee. She felt a little better, but there was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach today and she knew it wasn’t going to lift easily. As she took her phone up, unplugging the charger, she wondered if she should call Marcus. She hovered there, undecided a moment but then thought, no. He said he’d call, best not to talk so soon after what had happened. As she left for work, and a drive she was not looking forward to, Sarah tried to be positive about her relationship. It will be fine, she told herself, just you wait and see.

  Perhaps it would be fine, but when Sarah got to work that morning, something happened that made everything else in her head go right out the window. There was a letter with one single line stating that:

  Karl Stanver is the second killer.

  At once the FBI machine was put into gear searching out all the Karl Stanver’s it could. There were not all that many, and of those close to the area of the killings, or within a single day’s driving distance, there were even fewer. The letter was sent for testing and put on a high priority by SAIC Bobrick himself.

  All morning, Sarah watched, listened and read about every bit of information that came into the central hub from local police departments and FBI Field Offices around the region. It was always hard to tell just from the data on these people what they were really like, but almost always one person will stick out to a particular officer and they will want to meet this one in person. For Sarah, this was the Karl Stanver in Petersburg, Virginia. His record was squeaky clean, not so much as a parking ticket ever put to this name. Sarah couldn’t explain it herself; he was so clean and yet the mess in the car had been so unorganized, but something pointed her to this man. She felt in her gut it was the right way to go. She put in a call to Petersburg police to pick him up, and she would leave Quantico now to come and speak to him late that afternoon.

  Sarah plugged her phone into the car charger and saw that there was still no message from Marcus. As hard as it might be, she knew now was not the time to be thinking about her personal life. She was on her way to question a suspected murderer, and this time there would be no waiting on forensics. They already had the prints of the second killer in the car - in blood no less - and if they matched this to Karl Stanver’s, that was case closed on this one as far as Sarah was concerned.

  And that would be no bad thing; she could then focus on what she was becoming to think of as the real killer, who may in some outlandish way be the same man who killed her own mother all those years ago.

  What concerned Sarah most at this point was the killer’s willingness to play and how much he seemed to know about everything that was going on. Had he somehow put this man Stanver up to murder? An image of Des Roche came to her. Hadn’t he said he’d had no choice? Is this what he meant, was this killer somehow able to control them, to exert pressure on them to kill?

  Perhaps it was some kind of cult? That might tie in with the ritual cleansing of the three victims found like that. Maybe these others had been the stumbling practicing of disciples, sacrificing themselves for a higher power in the guise of a man? Anything was possible when it came to people who were willing to kill.

  So many things were running through Sarah’s mind, and she wondered again about Ferguson’s part in all of this. What would happen if the lab came back with a DNA match for him and the latest victim? Would Des Roche or Karl Stanver be able to pinpoint him as the man who knew what they were doing? On this thought she called the lab, and after being put through to a few different people, the answer came back that no, they did not have the final results back yet. Sarah hung up trying to keep her cool.

  “What the hell is taking them so long,” she asked.

  Didn’t they know people’s lives were at stake, here?

  Chapter 23

  Tyler hung up the phone and looked out the window towards the river. He’d just spoken to his informant in the FBI and had been told of the Karl Stanver letter Sarah had received and how she was on her way to Petersburg. It looked like he’d chosen the wrong one from his list of suspects. Or had he? Wasn’t it possible Sarah had chosen wrong and not him? Only time would tell, he supposed. He also noted that Sarah hadn’t been in contact either to let him know about this latest turn of events.

  Either way, he also saw how little time the killer had given him to act on this lead. The exclusive story on Karl Stanver looked like it was gone. It was hard to guess why the killer had let Tyler know about the name Karl Stanver at all unless he thought he’d figure out which one it was straight off the bat. Was that it? Had this been some kind of a test, one that he’d failed?

  Was it worth it to follow Sarah down to Petersburg? It was a long drive and it was the afternoon already. He decided against it and instead decided to look more into the Karl Stanver he’d gone to see. He looked at the glass with his fingerprints on it tucked in a plastic bag. He’d hoped to give that to Sarah to run through the lab, but it might never happen now.

  Tyler went to the desktop and started to look more deeply into the handsome sexual predator Karl Stanver. He was sure he was going to be able to find something, be it a poison Facebook post or tweet or even so much as a police complaint that made it to the local Palmyra newspapers. The more he looked into it, all the while the smug face of Stanver showing up on his social media profiles, the more he felt there was more to this guy. Was it much of a leap from what he was doing with those young girls - which was basically getting them drunk and then taking advantage of them - to murder? Perhaps he used a drug in the drinks of the ones he wanted.

  Sure enough, there was a whole thread about Stanver - though he couldn’t be named in it - on a site reviewing bars in the state. The name of the bar was also reduced to initials by the moderators of the site, but it was clear to Tyler who these women were talking about. It was a surprise with this much attention Stanver was still working at the bar. Perhaps he was owner or part owner or something and couldn't be fired; that would be something else to look into.

  The more Tyler searched, the more he found and he became sure this was not the man he was looking for. This man was only one day away from a date rape or underage sex charge all the time. He wasn’t careful, he didn’t cover his tracks and he was wide open to any kind of legal assault. This wasn’t the kind of man who could kill and get away with it. Killing, in it’s way, was a lot more artistic than this man was capable of. Karl Stanver was a bad man and deserved anything that came his way, but he was not a murderer and much less a serial killer or any kind of mastermind. Perhaps Sarah had made a better choice after all.

  Tyler sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, tired from looking at the screen for so l
ong. He walked around a little trying to think. Stanver was a dead end - he was sure of that - but then Karl Stanver in general, even the one Sarah was going to see, wasn’t the real point of the case. Someone knew what both Des Roche and Karl Stanver had done. The murder looked like it had been chaotic and unorganised. The real person of interest here was the man sending the letters and making the phone calls. He was the one pulling all the strings. Who was he? What was his motivation?

  Tyler felt he was most likely ‘John the Baptist’ orchestrating side shows to his main event. Throwing off the police, using diversion tactics but also playing. There could be no doubt he was enjoying what he was doing. Tyler had no doubt either that ‘John the Baptist’ had positioned himself to witness first-hand the aftermath of what he was doing. The image of him standing at the side of the road as Sarah and her partner Malick drove past at speed to Des Roche’s apartment came to mind. In this scenario, it was possible Sarah or Malick had even seen him, but they wouldn’t have been paying attention and wouldn’t recall this at all.

  It was hard not to wonder just then if the killer knew where Tyler lived. Had he been here a time or two late at night watching Tyler at home? It was possible, and unless he got too close to the house, he could have been well hidden in the trees out there. It was also very likely he’d looked in on Sarah’s home too. This was a man who liked to know what was going on, and who would want to know those people who were playing his game and looking for him. Tyler looked outside. It was a dull evening but still light outside.

  Going outside, Tyler walked his land in a large arc around the house looking for any signs of human presence. He didn’t find anything, but that didn’t mean no one had been there. There was plenty of his land he hadn’t walked just now, and there could be something if he had the time or the remaining daylight to look. As he stood looking around, the only sound was birds cooing. Perhaps it was time he looked into getting a dog, or dogs even. A pack of German Shepherds would raise an alarm if anyone was foolish enough to come on the property. But there was a lot of looking after when it came to large dogs. A lot of work. He would look into it later.

  Back inside the house, he called Sarah. He didn’t think he would get her as she’d surely be interviewing in Petersburg by now, but he wanted her to see he’d called when she was done. He hoped to get some information from her, and he would have to tell her about his own Karl Stanver trip. She wasn’t going to like that, there was no doubt about that, but he felt he would be able to smooth it over with her again. She wanted this killer even more than he did and that was blinding her. She thought it was Dwight Spalding, and if that was what kept the secret between them, he was glad to let her go on thinking that until it could be proved otherwise. Soon it would be too late for her to go to her bosses with what she’d been doing. She surely would get a letter of censure, and that could really upset her career at the FBI. Without that career she had nothing. It was the only conduit she had in her life where she could someday hope to avenge what happened to her mother.

  Tyler had some dinner while watching the news and then afterwards worked some more on his story notes while he waited hopefully for Sarah to call him back.

  Chapter 24

  Karl Stanver of Petersburg was agitated and sweating even before Sarah came in to talk to him. Local police had picked him up at home and told her that his face went white as a sheet when they came in for him, like he’d been caught in the act and knew it. As promising as this sounded, however, Sarah was worried that this was another man like Ferguson who may have some other small crime he was hiding from them and didn’t have anything to do with the main case at all.

  “Hello, Mr Stanver,” she said, entering the room with a file in her hands, “I’m Agent Brightwater of the FBI. I hope the local police have been looking after you?” she asked with a smile.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, teary eyed and looking at her in all innocence. Sarah had seen this before, however. Some men just assumed because she was a woman she’d be naturally more sympathetic to them, even though she was an FBI agent. It never made sense to her.

  “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out,” she said, still polite but with a little more of an edge to her voice.

  “Can you tell me your whereabouts on the evening of February 4th and the morning of February 5th of this year please, Mr Stanver?”

  “Well, most nights I’m just at home watching TV,” he said, “Some nights I go to a bar across the street.” Sarah nodded,

  “Do you think you might have been in the bar on the evening of the 4th?”

  “I don’t know?”

  “Well, I’m going to guess you weren’t,” Sarah said and Stanver looked at her in alarm. Sarah pulled an enlarged glossy photo from the file and put it down on the table for him to see. “This is you on the street outside a bank in Palmyra on February 4th.” Stanver looked at the photo, a still captured from CCTV. “See, the timestamp is 8.42pm.” Sarah pointed out to him.

  “This isn’t me,” he said after studying the photo for a minute. Sarah nodded; she’d guessed he might try that. CCTV images were notoriously grainy and often could not be relied upon for clear identification. But that was all changing with the growing use of digital recording.

  “How about this one?” Sarah gently placed down another still, this one crystal clear of Stanver coming into a hardware store when he went on to buy a short hacksaw and a Stanley knife, which it was assumed he went on to kill his victim with along with Des Roche.

  Stanver’s face went the shade of white the officers had described earlier and he looked up to Sarah as though in panic. Her eyes were hard on him and he looked away, unable to hold her gaze.

  “I...” he said, “I....”

  “This was taken in the hardware store where you purchased some items,” Sarah led him. He nodded and then quickly shook his head as though in retraction.

  “That’s not me either,” he said, “I can see a resemblance, but it’s not me.”

  “There are fingerprints in the car, Mr Stanver. Yours are being run against them right now, and I have a suspicion there will be a match.” He was still very pale, but he didn’t look at her. She could see he was thinking furiously but that he had nothing. “This wasn’t your idea, Mr Stanver,” she said, “That’s clear. It wasn’t Mr Roche’s idea either was it?”

  At the mention of Des Roche he looked up at her.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Mr Roche?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing about you,” Sarah admitted, “But he claims he had no choice.”

  “He didn’t,” Stanver said, and Sarah felt a rush of excitement run through her. Was he about to confess? “Neither of us did,” he went on and then broke down in tears. Sarah let him cry for about a minute and then went on with her questioning.

  “Do you know the woman you killed?” she asked. Stanver shook his head, still crying. This was a pity; the police didn’t know who she was either, and it was the same for all of the victims so far in this mess. Usually you knew who the victim was and you started from there, but with all of the murders in recent weeks (also something unusual in the frequency) they were fumbling around in the dark. “I need you to tell me what happened, Mr Stanver,” she said, “Can you do that?”

  Now he really started to sob and wail, and once more he shook his head. Sarah didn’t know what to do with this right now. He was a useless blubbering mess right now, but at least he was answering her questions using his head.

  “Do you feel you are in danger?” she asked him and this time he nodded. He still hadn’t looked at her and the crying was not letting up. Sarah wanted to ask who he felt in danger from, but she needed to ask something he could answer with a nod or shake of his head.

  “Do you know who you feel endangered by?” This time he shook his head, and Sarah sat back and sighed. She knew it was ‘John the Baptist’, but that meant practically nothing to her right now. If those who were killing for him or becau
se of him couldn’t tell her who he was, what use was that? So many questions were running through her head, but none of them she could ask him right now.

  “Mr Stanver, I’m going to give you some time to compose yourself and then I’ll come back to talk to you again. Would you like something to eat or drink?” He shook his head to this, and Sarah got up and left the room.

  Outside she told the guard to arrange for some food and drinks to be brought into the room. She hoped Stanver might feel different if he was left alone with these items for a while. It might go some way towards calming him down.

  Sarah got some coffee herself and sat in one of the vacant interview rooms. She had him, she thought, but this was only the top layer. It went much deeper than Stanver or Des Roche. The door opened and a burly man with small mean eyes peered in,

  “You the FBI agent?” he asked.

  “Agent Brightwater,” she nodded. “And you are?”

  The man stepped into the room now, and she could see his uniform and his badge pointing him out as Chief of Police.

  “Brogan, Chief of Police,” he said, “Don’t get up,” he put up a hand for her to stay put. Sarah hadn’t intended on getting up.

  “Thank you for arresting Mr Stanver for us,” she said. Brogan leaned against the back of the door and smiled,

  “Not a problem. I hear he’s already confessed, fast work,” he said.

  “Well, I don't count it as that yet,” she warned, annoyed that whoever had been watching her in there was talking about it already.

  “No? I thought he’d nodded to your question if he’d done it or not,” Brogan said, “We have cameras in all the interview rooms you know?” he nodded towards the one in the corner of this room.

  “I did notice that,” Sarah said, “But we both know a nod is not going to hold up in any court. A good lawyer would have that evidence thrown out in five minutes.”

  “Well, you and I know that he’s confessed,” Brogan pressed.