2. Chapter 2
We know approximately when he's going to strike; we know it’s got to be pulled from a small pool of people. Why can't we nail anything down?
The meeting room has become our permanent office these past two months, another two whiteboards rolled in, stationed on either side of the one mounted on the wall. We've stuck pictures of them into the network of lines and arrows, the past Needler victims and the potential next ones.
We've got two weeks left until his next kill. It’s starting to be that just walking into this room gives me a headache. Even Chloe seems to be losing enthusiasm thanks to our lack of progress.
I rub my temple. "Okay, again, who are the potential victims?" Dirk, looking like an unlikely schoolteacher, uses a stick stolen from some other purpose to gesture at the row of names and pictures up on the left board. "Okay, we've got the Cocooner, obviously, but the Needler hasn't hit him yet, so it seems unlikely."
"Let’s take him off the possibilities, then."
"And next we've got our construction site killer… could be a good candidate. Then there's Tartan Butcher-"
"He's only killed twice, right?" I ask, too tired to dwell over two murders being a time to use the word 'only'. Why do I stay here? Why does anybody? Nowhere else to go. We all believe it won't be us.
"Yeah, so maybe not high-profile enough for Needler. Next, we've got the Masker and Nurse."
"Okay, who do we think…"
"Masker," Chloe says.
"Why?" I frown at her.
She shrugs. "Well, he's not as careful as the others. There are suspects, just not the evidence, right? Needler has to find out who these guys are too, but he probably has other contacts. He might know what we don't."
"That’s not exactly conclusive."
"Well, if your theory that he’s doing it for public praise is also right, Masker is still a good candidate. Like the Strangler, he targets young women, sometimes teens, pretty ones. People society feels it should protect. Plus, his method is like Cocooner’s, probably inspired by it. Except…"
Here she wrinkles her nose, looking down at her notebook.
“He only covers their face,” I assert for her.
"Hm," Dirk hums. "So we assume it’s going to be him. What does that mean for us?"
I lift my head a little more, taking a long breath. "We can track him, like Needler. We know the Maker uses basements. Supposing Needler knows that too, that’s where he’ll probably make the catch. If we cross-reference every Crennick-area basement on record with the Needler's main haunts, maybe we can catch him before the strike."
Dirk tilts his head. “It’s a plan.”
“It’s the best we’ve got.”
***
Rain pounds on the roof, punctuated only by the heavy trickle from the places where it's found a way in. The crime scene tape is drooping into the mud now.
We're back in the office where the Strangler was found, though it's stripped bare now. The chair and the screen which took most of the blood splatter have been taken into evidence. A narrow stream of water falls consistently from the corner, running across the tilted floor and into the crack at the deepest point. It’s the kind of rain that is here to stay for a while, a proper Tregam monsoon. Even the temperature rises, making the usually cool city stew in humidity until the front passes.
Dirk runs a hand through his hair. He still hasn't gotten that haircut, and droplets stick to the ends. "Why are we back here, again?"
"Because by our calculations, the Needler is striking again next week. And we're no closer to having any idea where."
"So what, you think we all missed something?" Dirk asks, but he’s playing along. He crouches over the crack in the floor, picking through what used to be a phone book, plastered to the cement.
"All the things he leaves, the framed pictures, the newspapers. And his weapons… he must store them somewhere. Probably in Crennick. Maybe at whatever building he plans to use for the next kill."
"Seems thin. He could also just live alone."
I am fully aware that it’s thin. By the window, I peer closely at the fogged glass, trying to see through. But there's no chance someone saw. The suburb is abandoned. And anyone who was here sure as hell is unlikely to want to talk to cops. "I doubt it. He's careful. He wouldn't keep anything in his home."
When Dirk doesn't respond, I turn back. He's rubbing something between his fingers. "What is it?" I ask.
"There's sand," he says, frowning down.
Stepping over, I kneel too, looking at the small pale grains in his palm. "Hard to imagine these guys at the beach."
"It’s hard to imagine anyone at the beach here." Thunder rolls outside. The rain somehow gets heavier, like it’s determined to take out the roof. Dirk is frowning at the grains on his thumb.
"What is it?" I ask.
“I don't know… I feel like it’s a bit familiar. And I don't like the beach.” Shaking off his hand, Dirk peers at me. The kind of look that is more inward than outward. "That building we always pass on the way here, the tall one with all the arched windows. Wasn't that a glass factory?"
I frown. I know the one he means, but… surely it can't be that easy. "Maybe. You think…"
“I think we're grasping at straws. But this is the best we've got. Either Strangler or our Needler brought sand in here with them. And that’s the nearest place that might have it.”
“Alright. Let’s check it out.”
***
It’s past midnight by the time we spot any movement at all. And it’s not even me who sees it. Dirk straightens, leaning towards the windscreen. “There was someone at the corner there.”
Coming out of the daydream I was in, one where I was far from this cold car and this dead stakeout, I straighten up in my seat. “I can’t see anything.” I reach for the car radio, connecting us to the other three teams in their cars on this all-nighter. “Hey, anyone spot anything?”
The first answer comes slightly delayed. Probably they’d dozed off. “Nothing, yet.”
Dirk opens his door, letting in a wash of fresh, cold air. “I’m gonna check it out.”
“No one saw anything. Just stay.”
“I won’t be long. I’m just gonna follow them for a bit.”
“Dirk…”
“Keep the doors locked. I’ll be back.”
Before I can protest again, he’s gone, and I watch him walk ahead, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, until he disappears into the gloom ahead, around the corner. I sigh, trying to relax into the car seat, but my butt is numb.
Up until this point in the night, the rain has eased off, but some minutes after Dirk takes off, it starts again, growing progressively heavier, along with my anxiety, over the next hour as Dirk continues to be absent.
With no better way to vent my concerns, I check for the fourth time on the radio. “Anyone heard from Dirk?”
Again, negatives.
“Might just be waiting out the rain, El.”
“Hm.” I wriggle in my seat.
Another hour later, the sight of dawn’s glow on the horizon decides me, even as it sinks what hope I'd managed to hold onto through the night of seeing something genuinely useful. I’m reaching for my door handle, about to go out in the direction he went, in some vain hope of somehow tracking him, when the passenger door swings open and Dirk bundles himself back into the seat, his skin slightly damp, dark sleeves darker with wet.
“Hey, sorry. I got caught out in the downpour; I was waiting for it to ease a bit.”
“Dirk, Jesus! You were gone half the night.”
“Come on, closer to two hours.” He shifts in the seat, clearly chilled. “Besides, did anything happen?”
“No,” I say. “That’s not the point. How about with you? Did you see anybody?”
Shaking his head, Dirk starts to shrug out of his wet jacket. “No, turned out to be just some kid looking to meet the locals and buy drugs.”
Sighing heavily, I lean my face into my hands. I’m tired, relieved, and mad all at once now.
To think, I let myself hope for a moment, that this was it, that we'd catch him tonight. But no, the stake-out has proven to be in vain. All I have to show for it are numb fingers and a sore back from a night spent sitting up in car seats. Beside me, Dirk stretches his long fingers towards the vents, but the car is cold and so is the air coming out.
“You shouldn’t have left the car,” I say, without much spirit.
Dirk tilts his head to me with a grin. “Were you worried about me, El?”
“Yes! Actually.”
“Look, I was as bored as any man on a stakeout. Except maybe colder.”
“Serves you right,” I mutter, not quite ready to admit that nothing bad came of all my worry.
“Rest assured. My lesson is learned.”
I crack the window to let the fog on the windscreen dissipate. Light is coming fast now.
"El," he says, and I pretend not to hear him this time. "We need to call it. No one came."
I sigh, sitting heavily back in my seat.
"This wasn't it," he says by way of consolation.
"What are we missing?"
Dirk is tired, cold, and hungry, and so am I, but I have my other driver- hate. Reaching for the radio, he brings it to his mouth. "Okay, we're calling it. Go home, everyone."
Vague sounds of relief come back through with the static. I start the car, and Dirk immediately cranks the heater. "We'll get him next time, huh?"
"Yeah. Next time."
***
They're waiting back at the station, lingering on the steps with their black umbrellas open like the eaves of a depressing forest. We drive past, and Dirk gives a dry, humourless chuckle. "I'll bet we're not the only ones to work out the Needler's pattern. They'll know we tried to get him last night." Swinging his head to me, he says, "You'll have to make some kind of statement."
I shake my head. "If these people put their brains to some other use than the tabloids, we'd have fewer killers on the streets."
Dirk shrugs. "Maybe, but less people would know to look out for them too. Just keep it simple. Then we make this report and take the day off, alright?"
"Tawill isn't going to be happy that she's short on officers today for a failed stakeout."
"Most stakeouts are failures, El. She knows that."
Failures are all we seem to be getting lately, all we've ever gotten in this case.
I return the car to the station garage, and we cross the street back towards the front. The reporters are waiting. Some old hands, some fresh faces. Sometimes, as they come towards me with their microphones, I feel like I did the first time. Like picked-clean bones in the aftermath of my husband’s death. When everyone wanted their story; when grieving was no longer something private.
A seasoned police officer brutally cut down in the prime of his career, and right when he was so close to busting the Cocooner. It wasn't a story that came around often.
I fix a professional expression as they cut off my line of sight to the doors, to where Dean has just appeared. Dirk slips away, over to him, and I focus on just one of the reporters. A pretty blonde woman.
"Cars were seen leaving the old glass factory grounds at dawn this morning. Does this have something to do with the Needler case?"
"Unfortunately, the location proved to be abandoned," I say, not quite answering the question. I don't have an umbrella, and though the rain has tapered to a drizzle, I'm getting uncomfortably cold. I also don't ask how they just happened to 'see' law enforcement cars leaving the scene. It's a well-known secret that some of the more dedicated reporters know all our cars, even the supposedly undercover ones, and do everything short of stalking- and sometimes exactly stalking- to know where we are ahead of the competition.
“So no advancements have been made on the case of the Needler?”
“We are monitoring the advancements very closely.” It sounds just like the bullshit that it is.
Dirk is coming back from the doors. I see him between their heads, taking the long way around their backs.
“There are many who are wondering if our resources should even be spent on this. Whether they would be better, for example, aimed towards the Cocooner.”
I open my mouth to articulate a response that isn't just admitting that we have no idea who the Cocooner could be, much less how to catch him, but then another reporter jumps in. “Have you got anything to say about the Tartan Butcher?”
I frown, slightly irritated by the abrupt change in topic, even though it’s saved me. “What about him?”
Then Dirk is murmuring in my ear.
My eyes go wide. "Excuse me," I say to no one in particular, pushing through towards the station doors.
All ideas of sleep are suddenly distant.
***
The man is unremarkable. Middle-aged, bad teeth, pale eyes.
Looking through the glass beside me, Andrea, still in her uniform from the night shift, is telling me, “Name is Grant Brown. Or better known as our Tartan Killer.”
As I stare at him, the haze of sleep deprivation only thin in light of this new advancement, I try to imagine the man through the glass, sawing up body parts, leaving them arranged on picnic blankets- hence the name. I find that I can picture it.
He didn't discriminate on who his two victims were, young or old, male or female, pretty or not. He left them all in parks or reserves, anywhere in the city.
“He turned himself in at the EastLink county station at midnight last night.”
Why would he do that? “Are we sure he’s really the Tartan Killer?” If he’s not, he wouldn’t be the first madman to show up claiming to be someone no one ought to want to be.
“Seb’s running some matches to place him at the crime scenes, but so far, he fits the case. And he’s been providing details we never released to the public.”
"Dean said he was talking about the Needler."
"He clammed up after he told us who he was. Said he would only talk to the detective on the Needler case."
I blow air out through my mouth. “Okay. Thank you.” Glancing at Andrea, I say, "Time to meet a killer, then."
***
Now that I'm sitting across from him, Grant doesn't seem unremarkable at all. But maybe it’s just that I know what he's done, that I've been at the scenes, smelt them.
He's handcuffed to his side of the metal table.
“Grant… you turned yourself in last night.”
His grin reveals how bad his teeth truly are. Yellow in parts, blackened in others. It brings to my mind the parts of the bodies that couldn't be found, the ideas of what he might have done with them. “Safer in prison than out there these days.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The Needler was after me.” He seems to bask in my shocked expression. “Nearly got me too, but I ran. Straight to you people.”
Is he crazy? Oh, he’s certainly crazy. But could it be true? Grant is the Needlers type, and last night was when we predicted a hit. “You… saw the Needler?”
“Oh yeah, saw him, heard him. If you guys catch him… I want a deal that he ain't gonna be held anywhere near me.”
“You’re scared of him,” I murmur the words to myself, but he hears.
Grant's face turns angry. I see those cut-up bodies again.
“Can you describe him?”
“Oh yeah. Silver face, shiny like, and a smile like he enjoyed it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Big guy,” he continues, “that’s how he overpowers ‘em, gets ‘em tied down. He had a saw ready… ‘least I killed ‘em first. He was gonna start while I was alive! Sicko.”
"Where was this?" I ask.
"Cellar down on the east edge of Crennick. I've eyed it myself for downtime… Never got round to setting it up though, abandoned like. He chased me there like I was livestock."
"How did you get away?"
"Well." Here, he looks proud, like a near-death survivor who deserved his escape. "He didn't know I'd been there before, did he? I knew about the manhole over it, and I got loose long enough to climb out."
"Right. Now, back to his appearance. Our sketch artist…"
He slams a hand on the table, and I swallow my flinch, only looking at him, nonplussed. I could have let him scare me, but nothing irks these men more than a woman unimpressed by them. Shrinking into the little balding man he truly is, his voice has forced gruffness to it. “I need my guarantee first. He can’t get me.”
I let the silence stretch out, make him wait. He's the one scared now, and he doesn't like it. Closing my file, I stand, turning for the door.
"Oi wait, ain't you gonna ask about my crimes?" he calls after me. Perhaps he pictured getting caught one day, being able to tell his story and enjoy the rapt attention as he paints his own picture and describes everything in minute detail.
"No."
The door clicks shut behind me.
***
I go to the lab, even though I already know everything they could tell me.
“Where’s Rosie?” It's just Seb in the lab, hunched over his desk in the corner.
He looks up at me briefly, eyes flitting away as he answers, “Anniversary.”
“That’s nice.” I mean it, but as I sit down in an actual chair for the first time since sometime yesterday, it comes out exasperated. When was the last time I slept? I was meant to go to bed after reporting on the failed stakeout, but this morning feels like a long time ago now. And the stakeout, an extra waste of time since the Needler struck anyway, a few blocks from where we were watching. A look at my watch has my fatigue compounding. How did it get to lunchtime?
Seb has turned his chair to face me, where I have been quiet for too long in Rosie's chair. "L-long night?"
I manage a smile for him. He's pulled off his lab mask, and his mouth is a little crooked, quirked on an angle in a way that makes one dimple stand out very deeply. Seemingly oddly, he has straight teeth, the kind of person who you can tell has had braces in his life. "And a long morning."
"Rosie h-has a kettle back here. I heard you d-don't drink coffee but..."
"Tea would be great, thanks."
I need to get up out of this chair soon, or I'm in danger of falling straight to sleep.
“I s-saw the press conference this morning,” Seb says, from behind Rosie’s desk. I glance his way, but his hair has fallen across his cheek, straight and copper-coloured.
Taking the warm tea, and realising as I do that my fingers are cold, I groan, “Yeah, things didn’t go exactly as planned last night…”
Seb sits down again, stretching one leg out as though it pains him. Sometimes he moves like an old man, though he appears and often has the awkwardness of someone younger than me. But then, it’s not unusual to have old injuries in this business. "You want to know if it’s really th-the Tartan killer. Th-that’s why you’re here?"
Taking a long sip, I look up. Peppermint.
"It’s him," Seb tells me.
"You've got matches from the crime scenes?"
"Y-yes. Many."
I blow air out through my lips. “Okay.”
“H-he actually t-turned himself in?”
“Yeah. Scared of our killer, it seems.”
Another shy smile. “No one ever said m-murderers were brave.”
“True enough," I shrug. "But then, that should also be true of our Needler.”
“Maybe he’s just g-got different fears.”
“Well, it’s my job to find them!” I say with more gusto than I feel. At the door, I turn back. “Thanks, Seb.”
***