An Unkindness of Ravens Page 14

  The caller spoke fast and without pause in the same metallic, masking rasp as the last time he called. Tyler didn’t get to say anything before the line went dead. His first thought was the killer must be in this town to know he’d come here. Tyler rushed to the window and looked out on the street, trying to find a figure at a payphone or who may have been looking up in his direction. There was no one on the street at all. Not even a single car passed by for the few seconds he was staring out.

  He went back and sat down on the bed. It was good to know that he hadn’t been cut out of the loop but also disturbing to know the killer knew what he was doing. The blog Danny had texted him about while he was flying knew a lot of the details too, and he assumed it was the actual work of the killer. He must have technical skills to be able to hide the site from the FBI experts who would no doubt be searching down its origin right now. It would also explain his skill with masking his voice on the phone and his being able to use old phone lines for the call in Palmyra. What did he want?

  What was he alluding to about Sarah? Tyler already knew that he was going to come in for serious talking to by the FBI for what was revealed in the blog, but he had also noted that no connection between Sarah and himself was mentioned. He assumed the killer did not know this, but now it seemed that he did. Was he warning Tyler that Sarah was about to throw him under the bus to save her own career? There had been a missed call from Sarah earlier on with a voicemail mentioning the blog. He had saved that message, just in case.

  The idea of going out into the dark streets to look for ‘John the Baptist’ came to him, but he was sure it would be to no avail. This guy was good, and it was going to take something more than dumb luck to catch him.

  Chapter 30

  Sarah, having also singled out Elizabeth Barker as different to the others, had also made for Zannesville after speaking to ASAC Daniels. She had been able to use an FBI plane to get there quickly, and now she stood in Elizabeth’s home looking at the pictures on the wall.

  “These are Elizabeth’s pictures?” she asked Jane Moffat, Elizabeth’s weeping housemate. Jane nodded,

  “Yes, she loved putting things on the walls, and she was always moving them around, trying them out in new places. She liked the place to look different all the time.”

  “Did she tell you where she was going?” Sarah asked.

  “She said Florida, down to her family.”

  “Her parents?”

  “No, she said an aunt and uncle, I don’t remember what names she said, but I didn’t remember her talking about anyone in Florida before.”

  “So you thought it was odd?”

  “A little,” Jane shrugged. “But I didn’t say anything to her; it was none of my business really.”

  “Did she say when she’d be back?”

  “She said three weeks but it could run longer.”

  “She didn’t say why it could run longer?”

  “No.” Sarah nodded. The FBI had already been through her bank details and Elizabeth had taken a large amount of cash from a few ATMs in Zannesville before leaving. In the time she was missing, there had been no use of her bank or credit cards, or her phone. Looking at her history, this was very unusual behaviour.

  “Did you try to contact Elizabeth on her cell phone while she was away?” Sarah asked

  “I sent a couple of messages to her, but she didn’t answer.”

  “Was that odd? Would she usually get back to you?”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s hard to know when. Sometimes she’d answer a question I’d asked her by message the next time she saw me,” Jane smiled at this quirk of her friend. Fresh tears began to fall and the smile disappeared as the face crumpled in sorrow. Sarah let her cry for a minute.

  “To think those horrible things I read about in the paper had happened to her and we never knew it!” she wailed.

  “No one did,” Sarah said grimly. “Do you mind if I have a look around Elizabeth’s room?” Jane shook her head,

  “I’ll take you.”

  The room was neat save for the piles of books around the place. Some were on the floor by the bed, others on the nightstands on either side, some more still on the window ledge and a chair by the door. The bed was well made with a heavy duvet, and the wardrobe in the corner was full with clothes neatly racked. Sarah dipped and looked under the bed, there was nothing there, but she could see lines in the carpet where a suitcase had been stored.

  The books themselves were of mixed genres, though a lot were vampire or werewolf teen fiction. She noticed a notebook between the books on the nightstand and she put on gloves to take it up. It looked like it could possibly be a journal of some kind.

  On opening and reading the first few lines, Sarah could tell it was not a diary. It was a story, one that Elizabeth must have written. Scanning through the notebook it was clear that these were all stories of various lengths. She wondered if anything useful might be found in the pages if read thoroughly, but she didn’t have time for that right now.

  Sarah went through the drawers in the room, doing her best to put everything back as it had been. She found more notebooks and kept all of these in bags on the bed, labelling each one with where she had found it. As far as she could see, they were all filled with Elizabeth’s writing. She must have been at it all the time - when she wasn’t reading that was.

  When she finished searching the room, Sarah had to admit that unless there was something hidden in the notebooks, she knew no more now than when she came in. Elizabeth didn’t seem anything other than normal. There was nothing that she could see that would mark her out as different to any other woman.

  Another idea came and Sarah started to look through the books to see if they were from a library. Some of them were, but most were not. They didn’t bear the price stickers any longer either. Perhaps her bank details would show what bookstores she went to. It was the only lead she had leaving here. Other law enforcement agents were speaking at gas stations and businesses trying to piece together how Elizabeth had left Zannesville and made her way to Palmyra. It would only be a matter of hours before they knew that much, she supposed. That would be where the trail would begin.

  Her phone began to vibrate in her pocket. She left the room, took off her gloves and took it out. It was a landline number she did not recognise.

  “Hello?” she answered, her heart beating hard with the idea it might be the killer who’d called Tyler.

  “Agent Brightwater?”

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “This is Steven Forester in forensics. We have the results you wanted for the hair found on the body at Harper’s Ferry.”

  “Oh, yes, tell me?” Sarah said eagerly.

  “They were a match for the sample you provided us with.” ‘I knew it!’ she thought but said,

  “Have the results sent over to the FBI Academy, with my name as the subject. Thanks for this.”

  Sarah went through the usual channels right away to have Ferguson arrested. She still couldn’t be sure he was the person behind everything, but now she could link him to one of the murders. Not even his asshole lawyer would be able to talk his way out of this one. She had to hope that the Woodbridge police had not let him slip away while he was free.

  As she thought this, the timing of the publication of the blog came to her mind. It had tied in to when Ferguson had been released. She was ill at the thought; the tone in the blog had been mocking, and if Ferguson was clever enough to hide the origin of the blog and it was him mocking them, there could be no doubt he’d planned this all along and he was likely long gone by now.

  The worst thing was that there was nothing she could do about it from out here in Ohio. She came down the stairs in almost a trance. Jane was looking at her.

  “Are you ok?” the girl asked. Sarah came back to herself.

  “Yes,” she said, “I just got a call about another case, a suspect confirmed.”

  “Oh,” Jane sounded disappointed that it wasn’t this case. “Did you fin
d anything useful in Elizabeth’s room?” she asked.

  “She has a lot of notebooks,” Sarah said. “I’ve bagged them on the bed; please don’t touch them. Someone will be by to check them out.”

  “Those will be her stories,” Jane said, “She was always writing them.”

  “Were they any good?”

  “I don’t know, she never let me see any of them.”

  “Please don’t touch them now,” Sarah said, “They’ll be returned unless they become evidence, but if you touch them your DNA and fingerprints could cause an issue.”

  “I won’t touch them,” Jane said, “I promise. I don’t think I’d be comfortable reading them without her permission anyway, and that's something that’s never going to happen now.” Sarah nodded and put a hand on Jane’s shoulder giving it a light squeeze. There was nothing she could say to that.

  Sarah left the house determined to get the truth from Ferguson - if he could be found.

  Chapter 31

  Tyler got the news of the new search for Ferguson while he was talking to an old boyfriend of Elizabeth Barker’s he’d managed to find working in a hardware store. The boyfriend hadn’t seen her in a couple of months, and they hadn’t been a couple for almost two years. He seemed cut up about her death, and Tyler wondered did he think he’d have been able to stop it had they still been together. Who knew? Perhaps being single was part of why Elizabeth had been chosen in the first place. It was a fairly fruitless interview, but it would serve as patter and personal background for the story when he came to write her part of it.

  His phone rang and he wrapped things up with the old boyfriend, leaving the store as he answered the phone. Davis’ name was on the screen.

  “Yeah, boss?” Tyler answered.

  “I just heard that forensics have confirmed a hair found at the scene in Harper’s Ferry belonged to that Ferguson guy they only let go up in Woodbridge,” Davis said without any preamble.

  “Good luck finding him anytime soon then!” Tyler sad.

  “That’s what I thought,” Davis said. “Anyway, that was only incidental to what I was calling you about.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I got a letter today from California, you ever hear of Stewart Spekler?”

  “The ‘Spider’?” Tyler asked. He’d heard of a serial killer by that name before; he had killed twelve women in their homes by climbing in through upstairs windows.

  “That’s the one,” Davis said. “Well, he wants to talk.”

  “Isn’t he on Death Row?” Tyler asked.

  “Yes, and he has a date and everything.”

  “Who does he want to talk to?”

  “You.”

  “Me?” Tyler was surprised, “Just me?”

  “By name, I can show you the letter when you get back.”

  “Does it say why he wants me?”

  “No, you ever spoke to him before?”

  “No, never. Wonder where he got my name from?”

  “Well, you are a well-known reporter,” Davis said. “Maybe he’s sent this out to a lot of papers as well as us.”

  “Could have done,” Tyler agreed. “When is he looking for an answer by?” He heard Davis shuffle with the letter to check,

  “Needs an answer by post by this day next week.”

  “What do you think?” Tyler asked Davis. It would be he after all who would be signing the expenses Tyler would run up going out to California.

  “If it’s real, we should go after it. This is perfect timing with the ‘John the Baptist’ thing going on. In fact, that's most likely where he heard of you now that I think about it.”

  “That makes sense,” Tyler said,

  “He’s looking for three interviews,” Davis said.

  “Three?”

  “Yeah, personally I think he’s just reaching out for some human connections before his sentence is carried out, but who knows.”

  “Maybe,” Tyler said, though he didn’t think this at all. In all the time he’d studied serial killers he’d never known one to do something for anyone else. There was always a reason for what they were doing. An idle thought crossed his mind. Could it be somehow possible that Spekler was the one behind everything that was going on with the current murders? Clearly he couldn’t be the killer himself, but could he put Stanver and Roche up to what they did? Could ‘John the Baptist’ be somehow under his spell too? It was possible he wanted to talk to Tyler because he knew about the letters and the work he was doing with Sarah. Though it all made sense to him in that moment, Tyler shook his head and dismissed it; it was far too improbable. “I’m game if you think it’s good for the paper,” he said.

  “I do,” Davis said. “I’ll send the reply today and start trying to set it up. In the meantime, you keep working this story. Anything useful in Ohio?”

  “Nothing that’s obvious yet,” Tyler admitted. “But you know yourself, it’s often something small that means nothing at first that turns out to be important later on.”

  “Yeah,” Davis said, “Keep me updated anyway.”

  “Will do, boss,” Tyler smiled. Davis hung up without saying anything else.

  Before putting his phone away, he checked to see if Sarah had come back to him yet. She hadn’t and he was starting to worry a little. He dialled her number on realising that the last contact between them was the message she left him.

  Sarah answered on the third call.

  “Hi, I can’t really talk now, I’m on a plane,” she said.

  “Going after Ferguson?” Tyler asked.

  “Yes,” she said, not offering anything more than that.

  “You can’t talk at all?” he asked, thinking there must be someone sitting beside her, making it hard to say anything to him.

  “Not really, did you get my message?”

  “Yes, I saw the blog too.”

  “They’ll be looking to interview you.”

  “I know, I won’t say anything about you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “No...” she said.

  “Don’t worry, it will be fine,” Tyler said, “This case is the most important thing.”

  “That’s why I’m worried,” she said.

  “Don’t be. You’ll get this guy, I’ll get my story and everything will work out fine in the end.” He did his best to sound upbeat.

  “That’s if we’re not both in jail,” she whispered.

  “We won’t be,” he assured her, though he didn’t really know what punishment might await for obstruction of justice in a case like this. It would depend on how pissed off the District Attorney was he supposed. He thought he better hook Sarah in a little more to be sure she wouldn't bail on him, “We’ll get Spalding and then you’ll be a hero. We’ll find a way to get to the truth through the general evidence after the fact,” he said.

  “This is a mess,” she said softly, “and the worst part now is that Ferguson is free again. He could have skipped the country by now.”

  “If he’s involved in all of this,” Tyler said, “He’ll want to be involved in what happens next. He needs to be nearby to do that.” There was silence and he hoped she was thinking about this.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “I’m out of state at the moment,” he said to her after a pause. “Where am I legally if the FBI want to talk to me?”

  “There are FBI offices in every state,” she answered. “There’s no such thing as out of state as far as we’re concerned.”

  “So I better keep on moving then,” he said, smiling.

  “Just don’t rat me out,” she said. It was sudden and harsh, “This is more than a job to me.”

  “I know,” he said, slightly rebuked but not wanting to argue with her. Things were too delicate for that. “You don’t have to worry about me. Just make sure you hold up your end of the bargain.” His voice was a little testy, but he held himself well.

  “The sooner the better this is over,” Sarah said. Tyler didn’t respond to this.

  “
You know Stewart Spekler on death row?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s requested someone to interview him before his execution, and guess who might have the job?”

  “Really? That's a long way to go for an interview.”

  “It would be worth it to get to talk face to face with an actual serial killer.”

  “That’s not something I find pleasurable,” Sarah said.

  “Maybe not, but you can’t deny how fascinating it is.” He took her silence as agreement. “Anyway, I'll be heading out there soon, so I won’t be local if this case is still ongoing by then.”

  “I don’t know if that's a good idea,” she said, “What if he tries to contact you and we miss a lead?”

  “I’m not sure I’m his go-to guy anymore. He didn’t send the names of the victims to my paper at all. I found out about that online, the same as everyone else.”

  “Still, he might not be done with you.”

  “I think he’s moving on, just wants to play with everyone.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  “If it makes you feel any better I can have my work and home phones redirect to my cell phone while I’m away and my intern can keep an eye out for any mail I might need to know about.”

  “Your intern can’t know about what’s going on,” she said, aghast.

  “I didn’t say I was going to tell him anything,” Tyler said, “He can just send me a photo of any mail that comes for me. If I see one that I think is from the killer, you’ll be the first to know and I’ll arrange for you to get it straight away, OK?”

  “Why did this have to come up now,” Sarah groaned. Tyler had wondered the same thing, which was why he was even more interested in getting to Stewart Spekler than before.

  Chapter 32

  When Ferguson was found, it was not in the fashion Sarah had expected. For one thing, she had suspected him of murder, but now here he lay in the shallows of Belmont Bay, a victim of murder. His throat slit, his body clean and his finger missing. On the shore in a plastic zip lock bag weighted by rocks was a copy of ‘The Baltimore Echo’ bearing the front page story Tyler had done on Stanver and Des Roche. More mocking and Sarah felt the sting of it deep inside.