Death By Degrees (11 page)

“Crawford, you believe what you want to believe, but in every religion I’ve ever heard of, there’s a special place for people like you. Whether it’s Hell or Purgatory or Tartarus, it definitely doesn’t involve a set of wings and a wonderful view.”

“Such close-mindedness, Lincoln. I shouldn’t have expected any differently. If your own wife can’t open your eyes, how should I expect myself to be able to?”

“I may not know all the answers, Crawford, but my mind is far from closed. But if you’re going to try to tell me that this is all God’s will, that He wants you to murder a fuck-ton of people, I’m going to have to call you bat-shit-crazy. Then again, anyone who murders someone, wraps them in a shroud and carves an upside-down cross into their forehead should probably be fitted for a strait jacket.”

“Yet you aren’t closed-minded.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Or is it just the sake and beer talking?”

“
But come! Here, as before, never, so help you mercy.
”

“Ah, yes. I forgot you were a fan of the bard.”

“You know so much about me, apparently, yet I feel I know so little about you.”

I was lying on the hotel bed, my shoes long ago kicked off, looking up at the ceiling. The awkwardness of the phone call, albeit a very different awkwardness, paired with the way I was lying made me think of those late-night, teenaged calls to a person you were crushing on.

“What do you want to know?”

“You were a pilot, highly respected. What brought all of this on?”

“You must have noticed, Lincoln. Or was it perhaps too obvious?”

I shook my head, not that he could see it. “I don’t know what you mean. Clearly I missed something.”

“When did this all start? You must have seen my file, seen what had happened not long before.”

The moment he said it, I knew exactly what he was talking about. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it before.

“The crash. Not long after the plane you were flying crashed on landing. You were lucky to have survived. Yet you walked away with barely a scratch.”

“My life flashed before my eyes. I saw the end but there was something telling me it wasn’t time yet. What I saw next changed me, it gave me new purpose. It gave me a reason not to die in that cockpit.”

“And what did you see?”

“That will have to be a conversation for another day, Lincoln.”

I was starting to get a little bored. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“All in good time.”

“Fine. Whatever. Maybe you’ll answer a different question,” I said.

“Depends on the question.”

“You’ve killed sixty-five people. Is this going to end at a certain number, or just go until you die? I mean, you already said this ends with your death.”

“I guess there’s no harm in telling you, Lincoln. I have two more people I need to kill. But that won’t be the end. After that, there will be one more thing I need to do.”

That worried me. All I could think was that he had something planned for the end, some sort of grand finale. “And what’s the one last thing?”

“I won’t be telling you that. If your fate really is to stop me, you’ll figure it out.”

“Because what you’re doing has to be done. Because your fate is the true fate.”

“It’s all one fate, we’re all intertwined. But there is a path I’m on, and I do believe that in the end we’ll see that it was the true path.”

“So if I stop you, you’ll admit that you were wrong? Somehow I don’t buy that.”

“There’s no right or wrong in this, Lincoln. If you stop me, it was the way it was meant to happen, but every action I have taken will still have been the necessary action.”

“How long have you spent telling yourself all of this bullshit? How long did it take to convince yourself of all this?”

He sighed a loud, almost forced sigh. “I should have known that you would never understand. Of course, I don’t need you to. Your role is to stop me, if you can. If you can’t, then there can be no doubts.”

Interesting. “You have your own doubts about this. Maybe it’s not God’s work that you’re doing, maybe you’re just another nut. So you lure me into this to see if you can be stopped. If you can’t be, you were right all along. But if I can…”

“It’s… it’s not so cut and dry, Lincoln. You can’t simply assume that I’m wrong because I got caught. That could be a part of the plan as well.”

“I don’t think you’re as sure about this as you want me to believe. If it was all going to happen as it was supposed to, it didn’t matter at all if I was involved. You would have gone on your merry way killing people and then plan your big ending. So why bring me into it? Because you’re insecure about this, you think you know what your role is, but you doubt it as well. Like Thomas, you won’t believe it until you’ve seen it. You aren’t testing your own abilities, you’re testing God.”

I could hear him breathing heavily. He was getting annoyed with me, which meant I was doing well. “We can’t all be as relaxed as you, visiting castles and drunkenly belting out
Bohemian Rhapsody
and, what was it, a J-Pop song?”

There was no way. Crawford had to still be back in France. But what if he wasn’t, what if there was a way for him to travel without being seen or caught?

“Can’t turn down drinking with your colleagues here. We all have to take one for the team eventually. I hope you got some nice pictures of the castle, although now that I think about it was your camera even pointing the right way?”

I got up off of the bed and went out into the hall. Eddie’s room was two doors down. When I got close I could hear two voices inside – one male, one female – talking and laughing. I hated to disturb them (and really hoped that they were only talking) but I had to. I put the phone against my chest to block the noise then knocked on Eddie’s door.

Crawford was still talking. If he was planning on making me feel guilty for not working every minute of the day it wasn’t going to happen.

“We all need to blow some steam off every once in a while, Crawford. And after spending the entire day hiking up mountain trails and through dense forests in ridiculously hot and humid weather to find the bodies of people you murdered to fulfill your sick little fantasies, I think a few drinks were in order. Maybe you should hit up a bar or a
pachinko
parlour instead of following me around all day.”

Eddie opened the door; I put a finger up to silence him.

“Call Arata, get him to put it out across the country. Crawford is in Japan.”

Eddie nodded and went back into his room. He hadn’t opened the door very far, maybe I had interrupted something.

“I’ve played
pachinko
before, Lincoln. Never won anything. I’d rather stick to stalking and sick little fantasies.”

“Hey, man, to each their own.”

“I’m getting tired of this, Lincoln. I need to go anyway, time to head back to France. I’m sure I’ll see you there.”

He didn’t give me the chance to respond, just hung up the second he was done talking. I put my phone away and waited for Eddie. It was a few minutes before the door opened again, but this time he opened it all the way and let me in.

Najat was sitting at a small table where a deck of cards was spread out. I couldn’t tell what they had been playing but I was sure they’d been having more fun than I had just had.

Eddie’s computer was open on the bed. I picked it up and brought it over to the table then sat down across from Najat. He already had a word processor open so I just opened a new page and started typing. Everything Crawford and I had said, to the best of my recollection, I typed into that page while Eddie used his best Japanese to get through to whomever he was speaking with.

“Okay, here,” Eddie said a few minutes later, handing me the phone. “Got him.”

“Arata? It’s Lincoln.”

“Figured you’d be asleep by now… I know I was.”

“Sorry. Crawford just called me. He knew we were at karaoke, even knew what songs we sang. He’s in Japan. We need to get every officer in the country aware of who he is and what he looks like. Can you do that?”

He took a second to answer. It wasn’t a small request and there were channels it had to go through.

“Yeah, I can do that. Any idea where he is now?”

“He knew we sang that J-Pop song, so he couldn’t have left Kitakyushu before that. Doesn’t give him much time to go anywhere, an hour or so at the most.”

“All right. I’ll get on it, leave it with me.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not a problem. Still flying out in the morning?”

“Yeah, we need to. Crawford said he’d see us back in France. If you guys can’t find him here, then we’ll have to find him there.”

“Okay. I’ll keep you posted if we find anything.”

“Thanks, and sorry for waking you. You probably won’t be getting any sleep tonight, will you?”

“I doubt it. But you know how good a case like this is for the career. Should help me get into homicide down the road. And if it does, it’ll be worth a little lost sleep.”

“Well, then I guess I don’t have to feel too guilty.”

“Nah, it’s good, Lincoln. Thanks.”

“Happy to help.”

I hung up the phone and sat down at the table with Eddie and Najat. They had resumed their card game while I talked with Arata and I had interrupted it once more.

“Eddie, I need you to figure out how he’s following us. I’ve done counter-surveillance training, if he was actually stalking us, I’d like to think I’d know. So I don’t think he’s following us on foot or in vehicles. He’s tracking us somehow.”

Eddie only nodded. I could tell he was already lost in thought. Their card game was going to have to wait.

Chapter Twelve

T
he morning brought an early
shinkansen
ride to Fukuoka followed by a flight back to Tokyo. The
shinkansen
, or bullet train as we know it, was an awesome ride. Life flew by outside the windows as we tore down the tracks past small towns, along the coast and through the mountains. The transportation system in Japan was incredible, far better than anything North America had. The trains and buses ran like clockwork and covered the majority of the country allowing for ease of transit anywhere you wanted to go. There were still a lot of cars, but it seemed like it would be much easier to live life car-free here than it would have been back home.

I was quite impressed when my phone rang on the train, even at a blistering two-hundred-and-sixty kilometres an hour I still had a solid signal.

And my call display worked as well. It was Kat, someone I hadn’t talked to enough lately. I had been sending e-mails mainly because anytime I had the spare time to call her, it would’ve been the middle of the night for her.

“Hey, honey. How are things on your end?”

“Good. We got in late this afternoon and just finished some basic unpacking.”

“What’s the apartment like?”

“Honestly?”

That didn’t sound good. Maybe INTERPOL hadn’t wanted to spend much money.

“That bad?”

“No, Lincoln, it’s beautiful. We’re right near the park, not far from headquarters either. This is a beautiful city. The kids are so excited. They can’t wait to go to the park tomorrow. The agents that brought us here and that are guarding the place told us there’s a zoo there.”

“Yeah, I chased Crawford through it.”

“Oh, that was where you were? Okay, kind of creepy now. And these guards… are we always going to have them? It’s a little unnerving.”

“I know. We’ll catch him soon, I hope, and that’ll be the end of it.”

She hesitated. It was a question she hated to ask because it implied failure. “Any closer to catching him?”

I wanted to lie to her, just to give her some comfort, but she would see through that. Kat was a human lie detector, something the kids and I had learned early on.

“No, we’re not. And he’s still toying with us. He was here in Japan watching us. I don’t want the three of you going anywhere without those guards, okay? I don’t trust this guy at all. He’s taking huge risks to follow me. It seems like it’s bordering on obsession.”

That thought hadn’t crossed my mind before but I quickly saw how true it was. Crawford was stalking me, he was watching my every move, learning about my past. It was an obsession, a fixation, and I couldn’t help but think that wouldn’t bode well if we weren’t able to stop him.

“I’m worried, Lincoln. Saunders went after Kara, what’s to stop Crawford from coming after you?”

“I’ve been sleeping with my gun, if that helps.”

“Not the way you sleep, Lincoln,” Kat said, stifling a laugh. She was trying to remain serious, but she was right about my sleeping habits and the humour couldn’t be denied. “You’d either sleep right through the whole thing or you’ll end up shooting yourself in your sleep.”

“I’m not that bad. Maybe for sleeping through things, but I’m not that uncontrolled in my sleep.”

I had a tendency to roll, toss, turn, sprawl and perform just about every other acrobatic movement there was. Then there was the jerkiness. I’d hit and kicked Kat in my sleep, knocked my cell phone off my night stand, and tipped my fan and/or lamp over more times than I could count; pulling a trigger on a pistol wasn’t much of a stretch. Kat on the other hand could style her hair at night and wake up with it still looking perfect the next morning.

“Has he threatened you at all?” She was really worried, not that I could blame her.

“No, he just won’t leave me alone. I don’t get the vibe from him that I need to watch my back. It seems more like a fascination than something that could turn violent.”

“I hope you’re right, Lincoln.”

That makes two of us.

“Are the kids still up? Wait, what time is it there?”

“Almost one in the morning, so no. They took a while to get to sleep though thanks to the time change and everything. A lot of excitement too.”

I could only imagine. And poor Kat had been left to deal with it on the flight by herself. Julie was there as well with Aidan and  Anya so they could’ve tag-teamed the childcare to some degree. I wondered if Chen was receiving a similar phone call from Julie right about now, assuming wherever he was had reception.

Or was he already back in France? His cases had been much closer together geographically than mine - they were at least on the same continent. I had no idea what day it was or what time it was back in France. Everything had melded together somewhere between Finland and Japan.

“How were they on the flight?”

“They were really good. It was nice having Aidan and Anya for them to play with. Several hours beside your sibling never bodes well. Aidan and Link spent most of the time playing their Nintendo thingies and Anya and Kasia were colouring and playing with dolls. It was nice, gave Julie and I a chance to catch up.”

“And talk about Chen and I, of course.”

Kat laughed. “Obviously. Mainly we talked about how stupid you two can be and wondered if you were going to go and get yourselves shot this time.”

“You don’t have to worry about us, Kat. I promise.”

A long pause. “I hope so. Your track record lately is pretty bad.”

“I know. I’m being careful, Kat. I promise.”

“I hope so. I need to call it a night though. Guaranteed they’ll be up really early. Always takes them a while to get their sleep patterns back to normal after a flight.”

“All right. I won’t be home for another, well probably a day. This is a brutally long trip.”

“At least you got to go, I know how much you’ve been wanting to.”

“Would’ve been nice though to have spent some more time here, and to not have been digging up graves the majority of the time.”

“True. We’ll get there for a vacation at some point. I promise.”

“And I’ll hold you to it. Hey, are Chen and Kara back yet?”

“I don’t know, they were supposed to be in late tonight. Probably are by now, but I haven’t talked to Julie in a few hours.”

“Wonder how things went for them.”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Should I tell him to call you if I see him or if I talk to Julie?”

“Yeah, that’d be good. Thanks, babe. I’ll let you go though, you should get to sleep. I love you, and tell the kids I love them and I’ll see them soon.”

“I will, and I love you too. Have a safe trip.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” I said. “See you soon.”

“Bye.”

I put my phone back in my pocket and looked at the window as the world rushed by at top speed. My eyes strained to focus on anything they could but the objects they’d see would whip past too fast to ever really get a good lock on. The train glided on the tracks, barely bouncing or buffeting in the wind. If I closed my eyes for a moment I could barely tell we were moving, just a slight hum and the occasional bounce reminded me that we weren’t at a standstill.

If I closed my eyes long enough, if I let the world keep on moving by, would this all be over when I opened them?

I opened my eyes to reality once more and tried to force them open. There was no point in falling asleep now, our journey was long and the train ride was just a short leg of it. I figured I should try to save up my tiredness and sleep for most of the flight from Tokyo to Lyon. That was the long flight, the one I was least looking forward to. Although, there would be complementary beer; at that altitude a couple drinks and I’d be sound asleep.

I’d have to clear the plane first though, make sure Crawford wasn’t ballsy enough to book a flight home with us.

When I realized I wouldn’t put it past him I knew there was a problem. We needed to catch him. We needed to nip this in the bud before it got any further out of control and before Crawford took his brazenness to unspeakable levels.

“Lincoln, wake up.” Eddie was shaking me, his hand on my shoulder.

“What? Are we there already?”

“No, nowhere near actually. You’ve only been asleep for two hours. We aren’t even over mainland Asia yet.”

Then why was he waking me up? Just let me sleep. I had already grown sick of flying and prayed it would be the last time.

“What’s so important, Eddie?”

“I figured it out, what you had asked me too. It took some time until I clued in, but I got it.”

“Okay… start over. I’m lost. What did you figure out?”

Eddie held my phone up and waved it back and forth. I patted my pocket, wondering how he had gotten it.

“You left it on your lap. Sorry, but I had an idea.”

“About what?”

“How he’s been tracking you. That e-mail he sent, the very first one that told us where to find the remains of Jennifer Plimpton, the e-mail that was addressed directly to you-”

Out with it, Eddie. “Yeah?”

“There was a worm in it. A really good one. I don’t know if he coded it himself or what, but it took over your phone’s GPS system and used your e-mail address to send out your GPS co-ordinates. It was set to update him every ten minutes.”

I knew nothing about how this stuff worked. “You can do that?”

“Honestly, you can do just about anything these days. It’s quite a sophisticated program, everything was designed to operate in the background so you would never even know it was there. Even the e-mails weren’t kept longer than it took to send them, cleared right from the cache. It made it rather difficult to find it.”

“How did you?”

I shouldn’t have asked that. It came as a surprise when he didn’t even try to tell me. “Would you even understand if I told you?”

“Good point. All I need to know is you did it. Are we in the clear?”

“I think so,” he said. He didn’t look so sure though. “I’ve deleted it from the phone, or at least I’m pretty sure I got it all. These things can be like cancer, you think you got it all but there was a second iteration running below that one. Best case scenario, just get a new phone when you get back to Lyon.”

“We’re clear now though? Not that it matters, I guess. Not much he can do to follow us right now.”

“Yeah, I’m almost certain it’s gone. But now that we know where the problem was, it’d be kind of dumb not to get rid of the phone just in case.”

“Will do. Send the bill to INTERPOL, right?”

“Sounds like a plan. And make sure you get something nice, like the new Z10 or something. No point in buying something that’s already beyond obsolete.”

“Think they’d notice if I got a nice case for it as well? Maybe something sparkly, you know, just so I don’t lose it.”

“Right, so you don’t lose it. Whatever you say, Lincoln.”

“My daughter may have influenced me more than I’d like to admit.”

Najat, who up to this point had been silently sitting on the opposite side of Eddie with her face buried in a book, looked over with a smile.

“Having a girl can do that. You seem like the type of parent who wouldn’t have a problem with putting on a tiara and playing dress-up.”

“You’ve read me well. I may have been forced to play princess on a few occasions.”

“Just a few?”

“Are you trying to embarrass me?”

“Sorry, no, I’m not,” she said, taken aback.

“I was kidding, Najat, I’m cool with it. Sorry, just having some fun with you.”

“Oh, okay. I tend to miss things like that sometimes.”

“No worries,” I said. Time for a change of topic. “What are you reading?”

“Nothing fun, just a book on anthropology. It’s for a research paper I’m working on.”

“You’re a hard worker, aren’t you?”

“I have to be. Good grades don’t come as easily to me as they do to some people. I have to work very hard, study for a long time, memorize everything. I wish I could just remember it all right away, the first time.”

“I was the same way, don’t worry. I would take the most detailed notes I could in class, writing down everything the Professor put on the board or said. When I got home, I’d rewrite them and colour-code parts of them for easier studying down the road. It was a way for me to lock in everything I’d learned but it was also because for me to write everything the Prof covered I had to write fast and sloppy. If I left the notes too long, I’d never be able to decipher my own writing.”

Najat smiled. “I have the opposite problem, I take too long to write things out because my handwriting has to be perfect.”

“Yeah, I don’t have that problem.”

“Dr. Heinlen said you were one of his students before?”

“About fifteen years ago now. I had a few classes with him and did a couple of digs in the summer during my undergrad.”

“What was your degree in?”

“Biological anthropology.”

She shook her head slightly, trying to understand. “And now you’re a police officer? Dr. Heinlen said you were one of his best students.”

Did I just blush? “I had taken a couple of criminology courses that kind of steered me toward policing. And my wife and I had met during our undergrads and we both wanted to get started with a family. So I decided not to pursue a Masters degree or anything else.”

“He tried to talk you out of it though, didn’t he?”

“He did. But it was a lost cause. Kat and I were madly in love and the thought of several more years of school was more than I could bear. She was almost done as well, then just one year of teacher’s college. And I didn’t like the idea of spending the summers away on digs and everything once we had a family.”

“I think that would be hard. Dr. Heinlen seems to make it work though.”

“I don’t know how he does it. For starters, Kat would kill me since she’s off all summer, and secondly, I couldn’t stand being gone from the kids that long. Although I know Samuel started bringing his kids once they were old enough, assuming the place they were going was safe.”

“They’re past that age now. Both are off at university themselves now.”

“Really? They must be. I guess I forget how long it’s been. His kids were really young when I started taking classes with him. How long have you been a student of his?”