James Carol - The Quiet Man

‘Or something stronger, perhaps?’

Anderton laughed. ‘Yeah, that would work for me.’

They headed outside. Zeus brought up the rear, his tail circling around and around like a helicopter’s rotor blades. Winter could see Dale’s boat out in the middle of the lake. It was hard not to feel envious. The reality was that he’d probably be bored of fishing within five minutes, but the fantasy worked just fine. A world of peace and serenity rather than one defined by mayhem, destruction and murder was not without its appeal. There was another round of handshakes, then they climbed into Anderton’s Mercedes and headed back west, granite and stone eventually being replaced by the tall steel and glass mountains that defined Vancouver. The sky was the same, though. Wide and clear and impossibly blue.

Anderton kept her foot down the whole way, shaving almost fifteen minutes off the return journey. By the time they hit the city limits it was noon. She hadn’t said much since leaving Harrison Lake. Neither had Winter. Sometimes you needed quiet. Space to think. Winter was wondering about Freeman’s agenda. Because there had to be one. When you were dealing with a political creature like Freeman there was always going to be an agenda.

The Vancouver PD’s headquarters was based in an ugly utilitarian building on Cambie Street, right out on the edge of Mount Pleasant. It was constructed from brick and glass and ferocious right angles, and would never be beautiful no matter what was done to it. A five-minute walk east would take you to Eric Kirchner’s depressing little one-bed apartment. Five minutes north and you’d be at the Shangri La.

Anderton pulled into a parking slot and killed the engine. She got out and they went inside. They passed through security quickly and headed for the elevator bank. The investigation was being run from an office up on the sixth floor. Anderton led the way like she’d been here a million times before.

‘Is it weird being back?’ Winter asked her.

‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘You know, I’ve probably spent more of my waking hours in this building than anywhere else on the planet.’ She shook her head and snorted to herself. ‘I’ve never really thought about it like that up until now. That is so depressing.’

She hesitated at the incident room door, then pushed it open. The desks all faced a row of evidence boards that had been erected at the front of the room. There were only four detectives manning them. Three were on the telephone, one was on his computer. All four were animated and hard at work, which was understandable. A case that had been cold for the last three hundred and sixty-three days had just turned red hot. The clock was ticking. Forty-eight was the number in everyone’s heads. If they didn’t get this guy in the next forty-eight hours then it would be another three hundred and sixty-three days until he struck again.

Freeman was at the side of the room, giving one of his detectives a hard time. The detective seemed to be taking it all in his stride, like this sort of thing happened every day. And maybe it did. Freeman’s management style was one of the reasons that Winter worked for himself. The only thing worse than being told what to do was being told what to do by a person you had zero respect for. They walked over. Freeman held up a finger to indicate that he’d be with them in a second, then went back to busting balls.

Inactivity had always made Winter edgy. Whenever he got bored his brain started looking for mischief. It had been the same when he was a kid. He’d always be reading or playing computer games or practising piano, anything to keep the boredom at bay. ‘I’m going to take a look at the evidence boards,’ he whispered to Anderton. ‘Call me when Freeman’s done.’

‘Sure.’

He walked toward the row of boards at the front, aware that he was being watched. One of the first things he’d learned in the FBI was what it meant to be a necessary evil. The Behavioral Analysis Unit were called in to consult because when it came to profiling they were the best. The flipside was that there was always going to be someone on the investigation who viewed their presence as an affront to their competence. This time it was the person leading the investigation who viewed him as a necessary evil. Judging by the looks he was getting, he had a pretty good idea of what was being said behind his back. Not that it mattered. Having a serial killer for a father meant that he’d had to develop a thick skin. Being a Fed had toughened it up.

Winter started with the board at the far left and worked his way right. There were multiple pictures of the victims, both alive and dead. These were the attention grabbers, particularly the ones shot post-mortem. This time he was more concerned with the pictures of Cody and the husbands. There were plenty of them, too. They were the real targets. So, what had the killer seen in them? What had made him sit up and take notice? They’d been given a glimpse into how this guy thought. Now they had to work out what to do with that information.

The map on the middle board covered the same part of Vancouver as the map on the wall of his hotel suite. The difference was that Freeman had used red pins instead of inked crosses, and there were four rather than three. The newest pin marked Spencer Avenue, where Myra and Cody Hooper had lived. Once again it was within the circle that Anderton had drawn on his map. A hundred thousand people lived in that area. Was the killer one of them? It seemed likely. Four times out of four he’d chosen to hunt here. This was an area he clearly felt comfortable in. These were streets he would have been intimately familiar with. If he didn’t live there now, he’d lived there at some point in the past.

The board at the far right had three photographs, all pinned up that day. Myra Hooper was alive in the top one. This was a vacation photo taken in New York. She was standing outside the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. In the background was a partial glimpse of a Phantom of the Opera poster. She was happy and relaxed, totally oblivious of what the future held. The next photograph was from the crime scene. Myra was lying on her bed, her body destroyed by the blast. The third and final photograph was of Cody, the one from the refrigerator. He was staring at the camera and grinning his goofy grin. The background was too blurry to work out where it had been taken.

A low whistle carried through the room. Winter turned and saw Anderton gesturing to him. He walked quickly back past the boards, removing some photographs of each of the husbands as he went. Freeman and Anderton were talking footprints when he got there. The CSIs had concluded that the one found across the street from Myra’s house had come from a man’s shoe. The size was well below average, so the person who’d made it was probably well below average height. The depth of the impression pointed toward someone who was below average weight.

Anderton was nodding and making noises like this was the first time she’d heard this information. It was too early to say whether the footprint had been made by the killer, but it was looking hopeful. The clincher would be finding traces of superglue on the tree trunk. Samples were being fast-tracked through the lab, but these things took time.

Winter cleared a space on a nearby desk, shuffled the photographs, then laid them down in three rows of three. The distribution of faces was completely random, which was what he had been aiming for. The first row started with Eric Kirchner in the top left corner and was completed with two pictures of Nicholas Sobek, one with a beard, one without. The second row began and ended with David Hammond. The third ended with Kirchner. Winter nodded toward the photographs.