A Kettle of Hawks (The Birdwatcher Series Book 3) Page 12

  “This wasn’t what I meant,” he said, “But I guess it narrows us down to two suspects.”

  “If the immigrant doesn’t exist,” Sarah reminded him. She pressed her foot harder on the gas and they set off for the new crime scene.

  Chapter 29

  Megan hadn’t heard anything quite like it before in her life. She woke terrified and confused and looked around the darkened room.

  “What? What?” she said blinking as she tried to adjust rapidly to the gloom. Ellie was screaming and now Megan was able to make her out, curled up and scrunched back as into the corner as she could get, her legs kicking out at the bedsheets before her.

  “He’s here!” Ellie screamed pointing towards the far side of the room. Megan felt a lurch in her stomach and felt like vomiting as she followed Ellie’s pointing finger.

  “Where?” Megan asked jumping from her own bed to be on her guard, she didn’t see anything in the room.

  “Megan!!” her mother's frantic cries came followed by thunderous footsteps as she came running. Ellie was still screaming, horrified and frozen to the spot. Megan could see now and there was definitely no one else in the room with them.

  “Ellie, it’s okay, no one is here,” she said trying to be soothing but it was so loud to be heard over the screams that it didn't come out the way she’d intended at all. The door flew open and Megan’s mother stood there, her feet planted firmly apart and her hands together shaking violently with the weight and worry of the gun.

  “Mom, what the hell are you doing with a gun! Put that away!” Megan said, more scared of getting shot by accident now than of any possibility of Spalding being in the room.

  “What’s going on?” Melissa stammered, still bleary eyed, as Megan went over to Ellie who was still screaming.

  “It’s alright Ellie,” Megan said kneeling on the bed and taking hold of Ellie’s biceps to calm her down. Ellie looked at her and stopped screaming but she was still terrified and tears streamed down her face.

  “He’s there,” Ellie whimpered, her voice sounding completely defeated. If he had been there, she would be easily killed right now. Megan looked across the room to where Ellie had been looking. At first she only saw her confused mother standing there, the gun thankfully pointing to the floor at her side now but then she saw it.

  There was a pile of clothes on the back of a chair and if you looked at it in just the right way it gave the shape of someone wide and lumbering crouching down facing you. In the dark it must have been even more convincing.

  “It’s only clothes on the back of a chair,” Megan said joyfully. “Mom, push those clothes onto the floor will you so Ellie can see?” Melissa did as she was told, still white with fright and trembling

  “There look Ellie,” Megan said, nodding her thanks to her mom. Ellie looked and her body lost some of its tenseness. She looked at the clothes on the floor for a long time, Megan holding her in her arms all the while.

  “I’m going to need a brandy after that,” Melissa said as she sat down in the newly cleared chair.

  When Ellie finally spoke, it wasn’t what Megan expected.

  “I’m not so sure it was the chair,” she said. “We need to check all the doors and windows.”

  Megan and her mother exchanged a quick glance. They had been in a closed room, if someone had been here they would still be in here. She didn’t say this. Ellie had been through a lot of trauma lately and it was probably best to just humor her so they could all get back to bed and hopefully get some sleep.

  “You girls check the windows upstairs and I’ll look downstairs,” Melissa said pulling herself up to her feet. Megan thought she was going to go down and have that brandy after all.

  “No,” Ellie said, “You shouldn’t go down there alone, none of us should be alone until we check the house out.” Megan felt Ellie’s fingers grip her harder than ever and she nodded,

  “Okay, we all go together, we can start downstairs,” Megan said. She saw her mother roll her eyes and she turned away to lead them out of the room.

  They walked the house, checking all the doors and windows and making sure each one was still closed and locked. There was no sign of anything, not that anyone but Ellie expected there to be, and lastly they assured her that the alarm system was still set and that all the security cameras were working.

  The outside of the house looked so still and quiet and it was actually quite eerie. Megan felt a chill looking at the small screens but she didn't mention her thoughts. She was just having some blowback from Ellie's fears and would be fine once they got back into bed.

  Melissa poured a very small brandy and offered one to the girls who both declined. Megan had tasted it once when she was a young teenager and she couldn't understand why anyone would ever willingly put that stuff in their mouth.

  Ellie’s eyes were in constant motion, keeping watch in every direction. She still thought there was a possibility someone was in the house despite all the checks they’d done. Perhaps Sarah was right, it was professional help Ellie needed now. She was a young woman on the brink of collapse and Megan wasn’t going to be able to help her through this alone. She felt so sorry for Ellie just then.

  It didn’t look like anyone was going to get any sleep here tonight.

  Chapter 30

  Sarah and Delgado arrived at Tusk’s apartment about twenty minutes after getting the call. The forensics team hadn’t arrived yet and only two uniformed officers and detective Duggan were there. They were all standing at the door of the apartment with an area outside cordoned off with police tape. The detective turned to face the agents as they approached.

  “Have you been inside yet?” Sarah asked Duggan.

  “Officer Rake, here,” he nodded to one of the uniformed officers, “was first on the scene, he discovered the body and called it in. He closed off the scene at once. I’ve just arrived before you so no one else has been in yet.”

  “Good,” Sarah said, and then addressing Officer Rake, “You didn’t move or touch anything inside did you?”

  “Just door handles and I checked the body for a pulse, but I had gloves on and didn’t move him,” Rake said. He seemed nervous but Sarah put it down to his worry he had done something wrong and the big bad FBI was going to tear him a new asshole for it.

  “Good work,” she answered and he looked both surprised and relieved.

  Sarah, Delgado and Duggan donned gloves and blue shoe coverings and went inside. Sarah was happy to see Duggan was an old pro at this, going about the room methodically and thoroughly.

  “I’m going straight through to the body,” Sarah said; she didn’t have the patience to do any more than a cursory scan of the main room first.

  “Okay,” Duggan said, “I’ll follow you in a minute.” Delgado didn’t say anything but he walked over to the bathroom door to meet her. The door was still open and she wondered if Rake had left it this way. Did he find it open when he came in?

  The scene within was very familiar to them by now. The unmistakable body of Farley Tusk was in the bathtub slumped against the wall. His chest wore the gaping knife wound all the other victims had. As she stepped into the room, however, Sarah was instantly aware of something very different in this crime scene. On the wall behind the door in dripping letters, Tusk’s blood she assumed, was the message. ‘Run, run as fast as you can!” Even the comma and exclamation mark were in blood.

  “Look at this,” she said and Delgado turned to look.

  “What is that from?” he asked, looking sure he recognised it.

  “It’s from ‘The Gingerbread Man’ story,” Sarah replied and then recited, “Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread Man!”

  “Well, I guess ‘The Baltimore Bath Tub Terror’ or whatever the press was calling him are out the window now,” Delgado mused still looking at the letters.

  “I guess so,” Sarah said, thinking ‘The Gingerbread Man’ was the kind of name Tyler would usually come up with for these killers.
She wondered why he hadn't come up with a good name for this set of murders before now. As she thought about Tyler, she realised it had been a good few days since she heard from him. That wasn’t like him when they were in the middle of something. Was he looking into the people in the photographs still, trying to get some lead on Spalding through that? Or was he looking into the other case he’d heard about, what was it called- ‘The Birdwatcher’?

  Then she had a moment of worry, was he alright? Had anything happened to him? She was going to call him when they were done here, just in case.

  “No sign of forced entry or any kind of struggle out in the living room,” Duggan said from the doorway. His eyes saw the body just then and he shook his head, “Jesus that's some hole in his chest.”

  “There’s a message on the other wall there,” Sarah tilted her head towards it. Duggan leaned in and read the wall.

  “The Gingerbread Man?” he said and both Sarah and Delgado nodded.

  “Could be something else,” Delgado added, “But that’s the first thing that we thought of too.”

  “The second officer is going door to door to the immediate neighbors and I’m going to join in asking if anyone around the building saw or heard anything,” Duggan said. “Forensics should be here in a couple of minutes so are you guys okay in here?” He seemed reluctant to leave them alone in the crime scene.

  “We’re good, Detective,” Sarah said, “Forensics is part of our training too.” This seemed to mollify him and he took one more look at the body, then the message on the wall and left to canvas people in the area.

  When they were alone, Sarah carried out a quick search of Tusk’s body, but there were no other wounds and nothing in his pockets.

  “This writing on the wall looks very neat to me,” Delgado said from behind her. She turned to look at it again, “The blood must have been starting to dry when the killer wrote with it.” Sarah agreed with him, which meant the killer hung around for a little after the murder. But how long after?

  “We should look out on the street,” Sarah said as an idea came to her.

  “What for?” Delgado asked.

  “Someone who doesn’t belong here,” she said leaving the room, careful not to disturb the scene. Delgado followed.

  Tusk’s apartment was on the second floor and a small pass way ran in front of his door that showed out onto the street. They looked around so see if anyone was watching the apartment and looking suspicious. There was a small group of people gathered at the gate to the building, but they all seemed to know one another and were acting like they were shocked. No one looked out of place.

  There was movement directly below and Sarah looked over the edge to see a uniformed officer coming out from one of the downstairs apartments.

  “Officer,” Sarah said and he looked up. "Make sure you get the names of all of those people by the gate.” He looked to the group and then nodded back to Sarah before walking over to them. Sarah watched the group as the policeman approached and none of them did anything to make her wary of them.

  “You see anyone?” Delgado asked her after he’d scanned the street.

  Sarah shook her head,

  “No, maybe CCTV will show us the way after the fact.” It was annoying when a hunch didn’t result in anything.

  “Eddy Hobbs and Ray Pallister better have good alibis for today,” Delgado said. They were down to two suspects. Things were getting tight.

  Chapter 31

  It was time to go to California and for the newly titled ‘Gingerbread Man’ case, the timing couldn’t be worse for Tyler. Or his boss.

  “You’ve got to cancel going out to California,” Briggs had called him to say. “This story is going to break wide open now. It’ll be everywhere!”

  “There’s nothing new on this story apart from the name he’s given himself,” Tyler countered. It’s nothing I can't write while I’m on the plane or in California.”

  “Tyler, you know something is going to come about after this,” Briggs said.

  “I don't know that,” Tyler countered, “The Spekler story puts an end to that piece of work though. If I miss this I can’t truly finish that story!”

  “The California press will cover that to death,” Briggs scoffed.

  “Yes, but they won’t have what I have. I spoke to him, he requested I be there and I have no doubt he’ll want to talk to me again or give a message before he goes.”

  The call ended as Tyler expected it would.

  “This is all about your precious fucking book isn’t it!” and Briggs hung up. Tyler didn’t care, his days at that paper were becoming less all the time, he could see that clearly now. He was on his way to the airport now and would be in California in a few hours for the lead up to the execution of Stewart ‘The Spider’ Spekler.

  The flight was long and Tyler was very happy to step out into the California sunshine on arrival. He picked up his rental car and then drove to his hotel. He didn’t make the same mistake as the previous time he’d been out to see Spekler and had chosen a hotel with a very good name for the quality of its internet connection for guests.

  Spekler was due to be executed at the stroke of midnight and by the time Tyler had checked in and gone down to get dinner it was already five in the afternoon. He checked his emails while eating a couple of burgers in the hotel bar and then read some of the stories in the other papers about what was going on in Baltimore with ‘The Gingerbread Man’ case.

  As expected there was nothing new in any of the stories. Something told him there wasn’t going to be. This was Spalding’s doing and he would know Tyler was not going to be around. In fact, Tyler felt sure Spalding would be in California too. He would want to know what Tyler was going to do seeing as he’d managed to keep his urges at bay until now. Tyler would be keeping an eye out for him and any opportunity that might arise to kill him.

  His plan at the moment though was to get the execution over with and then carry out his work in the night after this. He didn’t have an intended victim but then, he never really did. For Tyler it is all about the probabilities that he couldn’t be where the murder was carried out, or where the body was buried. The window should never seem long enough if ever he was caught or suspected.

  Tyler went to the prison for ten o'clock, the latest they said he could come and still gain admittance. As he drove in he saw that there were dozens of protesters on either side of him waving banners that called for revenge or justice in God’s name. Tyler hadn’t seen them but he was sure somewhere a little farther off would have been another protest but this time against the death penalty. Those at the gate were most likely to be family members and friends of those who had been killed by Spekler. It was a strange phenomenon to turn up outside a place like this when you had no access and couldn’t see anything, but you still wanted to be nearby when it happened.

  Tyler signed in as he had in the past, signing waivers and being patted down for weapons or any banned items. He was then shown into a long corridor and brought to a room about halfway along. The room was small, about sixteen feet by sixteen and there were two rows of four chairs facing a purple curtain that must cover the window through which they would see Spekler take his last breaths on this earth.

  Three of the seats were occupied by women who were crying- more victims' families- and two other men stood around chatting quietly in the corner. Tyler didn’t know them and couldn't tell if they were press or more family. It was an awkward moment and he didn’t feel it would be appropriate to simply introduce himself. Victims' families were not usually pleasant to people who wrote books about their killers. The men nodded to him and went back to their whispers. The women paid him no heed at all, each of them staring fixedly on the curtain as if they might will it open and make the time go faster until justice was served.

  It was a very long wait for something to happen. Tyler sat down on the chair closest to the door in the second row. There was no cell coverage in the room so he took out his notebook and took down some no
tes about the room. This would all be material for his upcoming book and he hoped no one in the room would notice what he was doing and make an issue out of it.

  At ten minutes to midnight, a man came into the room. He introduced himself as a member of the Department of Corrections and then ran through the schedule and rules for what was going to happen. He ran through it in such clinical detail it surprised even Tyler. Anyone of a nervous disposition would have left the room right away. The man then left the room and everyone remaining sat facing the curtain.

  When the curtain rolled back, Tyler was surprised to see Spekler was already strapped down to the table with a guard at the door and the toxic mess that would kill him already hooked up to his veins. He didn’t know why he thought it would be any different, but he realised now that he’d expected they would see all of the set up happening. He wasn’t disappointed the way it had turned out. It would have been tedious to watch such a process and would have served to make the family more riled up before the actual execution was carried out.

  Spekler wasn’t looking at the window and this seemed to really make the family in the room furious. One of them got up and banged on the glass.

  “Look this way you coward!” The glass was thick and didn't move at all and no one in the room seemed to notice it at all. It was soundproofed and probably bullet proofed in case someone managed to smuggle in a pistol.

  There was a large white clock in the room and the man inside who seemed to be running things nodded towards Spekler. It was one minute to midnight. The sound of an open speaker channel into the room came alive in the observation room.

  “Stewart Spekler, you have been sentenced to death by lethal injection and your sentence is about to be carried out. Do you have any last words?”

  “Who gives a shit what he has to say about anything!” one of the women shouted but Tyler guessed the speaker channel was one way. Spekler looked to the window now, but his eyes sought out only Tyler’s. He shook his head, he didn’t have anything else to say. Tyler was taken by surprise. He’d spoken to Spekler and saw how much he wanted to talk all the time. He had thought Spekler would have talked for as long as they would let him. Instead those dull eyes looked into Tyler’s. There was no emotion in those eyes but Tyler held them all the way to end. He watched the man die with all the shouting going on around him and he took in the feeling of death, a friend he was going to acquaint himself with this very night. Stewart Spekler died in less than thirty seconds and the end of that chapter in Tyler’s book was completed.