Death By Degrees (14 page)

“The zoo?”

“I want to go to the zoo!”

And so on.

“I guess so,” I said. “Why don’t we head there? We can eat first and then explore.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

“The kids have spoken,” Julie said. “I guess we go. You guys coming?”

I felt bad for the four of them, it was a hot day for following us around. It didn’t help that Julie and Kat both found the whole idea of being under constant surveillance absolutely bizarre and took the chance to make the occasional joke about it. They barely spoke though and while I knew some of them were bilingual, I wasn’t sure which of these four would have even picked up on Julie’s sarcastic comment.

They just walked when we walked and stopped when we stopped. It was like having a well-dressed and armed shadow.

We ate a quick lunch of hot dogs and French fries – fitting given where we were – before setting off to see all the animals. The zoo wasn’t remotely as large as the Toronto Zoo (which made for a lot less walking), but the selection of animals was very good. The newest addition, which had opened only a few years prior, was the African Plain. It consisted of over a hundred animals living within an open area a couple of acres in size that consisted of savannah, wetlands, an island and a separate enclosure for the crocodiles.

The most interesting part for me was seeing the Barbary lions which had been extinct in the wild since the mid-1900s. Mating programs had been set up with hopes of eventually being able to reintroduce them to the wild. They were different from other lions in that they tended to live a solitary life as opposed to in a pride, something that had likely been forced upon them due to the scarcity of food in their previous habitat. They were also considered to be the largest of the lion subspecies with the males apparently reaching over five hundred pounds.

They were beyond impressive. For some reason the idea of a very large, solitary lion sat better with me than the idea of a pride. Maybe it’s because I was used to anti-social housecats, or maybe the solitary life was simpler. I watched the kids running between the animal exhibits while the four of us tried to stay on top of where they were at all times, while the other four adults tried to keep an eye on the eight of us and everything around us all.

Alone you only had one thing to worry about: your own survival.

Our time at the zoo was finished just before dinner and by that time we were all hungry again. We decided to meet up with Eddie, Najat and Kara for dinner at a Syrian restaurant called Alyssaar. It was located to the south a bit and then just across the Rhône river off of
Quai Jean-Moulin
. The restaurant was owned and operated by a Syrian-born chef and the food was fantastic, better than I could have expected. Kat and I both had the
kharouf
, a dish consisting of lamb in a sesame cream sauce. The best part of it was that the kids actually behaved the entire time, and ate all of their food, allowing us all to enjoy our meal in near-silence.

All in all, a wonderful time spent with family and friends. Kara regaled Kat and Julie with tales of her shopping trip while Chen and I both tried to prepare for the demands of shopping-deprived spouses as well as the drain on the family finances. Kat had been through hell in the last little while, so I was sure I could allow a semi-reasonable shopping trip. The problem I knew was going to fall upon the definition of semi-reasonable and just what that meant in terms of how many pairs of shoes she could buy. I knew I’d end up losing anyway, and at that moment I resolved myself to not put up a fight when the time came.

Chen I wasn’t so sure about. Chen was far more financially responsible (read cheap) than I was, but he was also way ahead on paying off his mortgage than we were. Well, until our house burned down and the insurance paid out. So technically we were ahead of the game now, only by virtue of being homeless.

Eddie and Najat had spent the day at the same park we were at, although they stayed around the lake and away from the zoo. We didn’t get a lot of details from them other than they spent most of their time on the lake after renting a little rowboat. I wanted to pry, but at the same time I figured it was nice for them to have what they did. With everything going on around us, having something safe to cling to was a necessity.

We all walked home after dinner, opting for some fresh air instead of trying to cram ourselves into a couple of cabs. It wasn’t a long walk and at night with the streets along the river lit up, it was a beautiful sight. We walked north and decided to take a longer route, crossing the Rhône along the Winston Churchill Bridge. This meant a short backtrack south to our apartments on
Rue Barr
è
me
. When we arrived at the apartment block Eddie and Najat went off together and Kara went on her own. The Chens came up to our apartment where the day off continued. We plopped the kids down in front of the television and they eventually managed to come to a consensus on what movie to watch, settling on
Despicable Me
.

The adults went into the kitchen and sat at the table with a drink. We talked about the kids, about their school, about places we wanted to go while we were here, all the things we wanted to see. For once we talked about everything but Crawford. His name never came up, neither did the topics of corpses or shallow graves, ritual killings or crosses carved into skulls. It was like the kitchen was set apart from the world, a microcosm where the harshness of reality no longer existed.

If only it could have lasted longer than one night.

Chapter Fourteen

I
stood in front of the monitor going through images and documents to see if I had missed something. The day was starting just like every other and it would likely finish the same way – with nothing new gained. We were refreshed though, the day off had done wonders for morale and there seemed to be a slight spring in our steps and vestiges of smiles on our faces.

It didn’t take long until we realized that things were not going to be the same as before. I had been staring at the monitor for only about a half hour that morning when my phone rang. It had been so long since Crawford had lost called that I didn’t even think it could be him.

“Detective Munroe.”

“Lincoln, it’s been a while. I hope you’ve been well.”

“Crawford. What rock have you been hiding under?”

“Funny. I’ve been busy. You made it a little tricky to get out of Japan.”

I laughed. “Sorry. I hate to inconvenience you. But you did kind of bring that one on yourself, letting me know you were there and everything.”

“A minor setback, but it actually helped me out in a way. My escape came on a flight to the very place I needed to go next: Sri Lanka. When you’re ready to write, I’ll give you the coordinates.”

Fuck. We’d failed someone. I knew it was going to happen but it didn’t make it any easier. Someone, somewhere was dead because we weren’t good enough at our jobs. Sure Crawford hadn’t made it easy on us, but I couldn’t help but think there was something else we could have done. One thing, one difference, and maybe we would have put an end to this already.

“Go ahead.” I tried to keep my voice level.

“8.147942 north, 81.167157 east. I would’ve just e-mailed you, but you probably wouldn’t have opened it.”

“You’re right. I wouldn’t have. We found your program. Pretty ingenious, but I guess you’re running blind now.”

“Doesn’t matter. Knowing exactly where you were just added another level to the game, made it a little more entertaining.”

“Is doing God’s work supposed to be so much fun?”

“I’m not getting into another discussion of this, Lincoln.”

“What’s the victim’s name? Date of birth is what, somewhere between the thirteenth and twentieth of October?”

Crawford didn’t speak. I waited for fifteen seconds or so, before the silence began to grow uncomfortable.

“We cracked your little code. The whole thing just keeps getting more and more out there… like drink the poisoned Kool-Aid out there.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. He sounded stressed. Or was it surprised? “You’re smarter than I thought you were. But it makes no difference. The victim is Tharindu Sittampalam, born October 20th, 1990.”

“Male or female?” I said, stalling while I searched the requisite verse.

“Male.”

“So the 20th…
He who testifies to these things says,
“
Yes, I am coming soon.
”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
”

“Aren’t you clever? I should give you a gold star. That verse has more than one meaning, well, to me anyway. But I should leave you to your work. Good luck in Sri Lanka.”

He hung up before I could say anything else or get any other information out of him. More than one meaning… I didn’t know what he meant by that. It seemed pretty straight forward.

“We’ve got another one. This time in Sri Lanka. I’ll look into the earliest flight we can get.”

It didn’t take me long to find out that we needed to be at the airport as soon as possible. The flight left at one in the afternoon and involved a couple of stopovers before we arrived in Columbo, Sri Lanka. The burial site was across the island though and would take a while to get to by road. I spoke with Jean-Pierre who had been back in the office and in charge since we returned from Japan. He advised he would arrange for a chartered plane to be waiting for us at the Columbo airport that would get us much closer to the site.

Crawford didn’t want to make things easy. He rarely buried his victims in areas that were easily accessible, although if I were going to dig a shallow grave and dump a body in it, I’d be choosing a less-traveled area as well. Not being caught was rule number one.

I decided on Kara and Najat as my backup for this case. Eddie and Chen would stay in Lyon to keep looking for Crawford while being prepared to receive any information we sent back to them. I wanted to take the whole team, but it would have been impractical. Someone needed to stay behind to man the fort.

Neither Najat nor Kara wanted the window seat on the plane, something I was quite happy about. I hated sitting in the middle or on the aisle. It was beyond boring; the best part of flying was staring out the window as the world shrunk away. The perspective gained at forty-thousand feet was an amazing one, showing at the same time both just how small and large the world was.

The plane taxied around the tarmac toward our runway. We stopped for a short time before I could hear the engines firing up. The plane began to roll down the runway, bouncing slightly as it picked up speed until the sudden rush of liftoff passed through me. The climb was a rapid one, and before I knew it the cars and houses in the area looked like pieces on a Monopoly board.

My phone rang. A steward looked over and saw me reaching for it, but the admonishing glare and the order to turn it off wasn’t enough when I saw who it was from.

“Chen, what’s going on?” I held out my ID card and mouthed the words ‘official business’. He still glared at me, then he began to get angry. His voice raised with each time he told me to get off the phone.

“Don’t hang up, Link. Don’t hang up. He has her… he’s got Kat.”

Chapter Fifteen

“W
hat?”

“He’s got Kat,” Chen said again.

“No. There’s no way.”

“He took her from the school, Link. Posed as an agent, said you’d been injured in a shoot-out. The guards were national police and he must have been disguised. They believed it long enough for him to get close. Said he needed to get Kat to the hospital, that you were dying. They must not have been willing to budge… he shot them both, Link. One’s dead, the other’s in hospital.”

Fuck. She was volunteering at the school today, helping out in the classrooms.

“This can’t be happening.”

“Sir, you need to get off the phone now.”

“We’re in the air, Chen.”

“Sir!”

“Shut the fuck up for a minute.”

“Get it brought down, Link. Get them to bring it down. I’ll be at the airport waiting for you.”

“Sir! This is your last warning.”

“Seriously, I said to shut the fuck up. Tell your captain to turn the plane around. We’re going back.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Bring me to the captain.”

“I can’t do that. And if you don’t sit back down and be quiet you will be arrested.”

“And then you have to land the plane. Fucking arrest me then. I’m with INTERPOL goddamnit and my fucking wife has been abducted.” His face went blank. “If you really think I care about you or the rest of this plane right now you’re an idiot. Bring it down.”

The steward walked away, a terrified look on his face. He made his way to the front of the plane and picked up a telephone handset. I could see his mouth moving but couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Whatever it was, it did the trick. In under a minute the plane banked heavily and we turned back toward Lyon. I knew it was the panic setting in but it felt like he had hit the brakes. The flight back until we landed seemed ten times as long as it had been since takeoff.

The plane touched down and within minutes was surrounded by police vehicles. Shit. I really hoped I hadn’t screwed things up. I couldn’t afford to be arrested for interfering with aviation or whatever the French charge would be. They brought one of the movable staircases out to the plane and a few officers moved in. I looked out the window into the distance and saw another vehicle bearing down on the plane, lights flashing. The car came to a stop and I was extremely relieved when Chen stepped out of the driver’s side, ID badge in hand.

He walked over to where the ranking officer was and I could see that he was pissed off and yelling. There were a couple of times were I thought he was about to hit the other officer. Finally Chen walked toward the staircase and the others fell back. Chen looked back and put his hand in the air. A moment later the steward I had yelled at came and opened the door. It was time for me to leave.

Kara and Najat stood up to let me pass then followed right behind me. I could tell that they were both panicking, fear was setting in but they were shocked into silence. What do you say to a man who has just found out his wife was in the hands of a serial killer?

We walked down the stairs onto the tarmac and toward Chen. He came up to me and threw his arms around me.

“I’m sorry, Link. We’ll find him, I swear to God we’ll find him and make him fucking pay for this.”

All I could do was nod. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t cry. I could only nod.

We all got into the car and Chen put the lights and sirens on before speeding away toward the exit. Somehow he’d convinced them to let him in, somehow he’d convinced them to let me go. However he had done it, I owed him.

“I’m going to kill him, Chen. I’m going to kill him and I’m going to take my time.”

“I know, Link. We’re going to get him, and we’re going to get her back.”

“How long has he had her?”

“About an hour now. The officers guarding her had tried to raise someone to ask about you, but they kept getting static. He was adamant though, said she needed to come with him. Said you were dying and had asked for her. They wouldn’t budge though, so he shot them both and dragged Kat out of there. There was so much panic in the school that it took them some time to realize what was happening. By that point, she was already gone.”

“This can’t be happening. The kids?”

“Julie went to the school to get them.”

“I can’t… I can’t do this, Chen. What am I going to tell them? Fuck, this is all my fault. Fuck, Chen. October 21st… Revelations 10:21… it’s the final verse. Her birthday. How could I have missed that?”

Chen took a moment, caught his breath.

“Her birthday is on Hallowe’en, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, her real birthday is the thirty-first, but her birth certificate was wrong and her parents never bothered to get it changed. All of her official documents say the twenty-first.”

“Shit, I didn’t know that.” He paused, searching for the words. “You can’t blame yourself, Link. You talked to her about it too, she must not have made the connection either.”

“If she’s gone, Chen. If she’s dead…”

“She’s not. We’ll get to her. I promise you.”

We had no idea how long he waited after abducting his victims before he killed them. I hoped there was some long, drawn out ritual that would give us the time we needed. It was all I could hope for.

Time.

More time.

Chen raced through the streets of Lyon toward the school. We had to start where it all began. Traffic parted in front of us as he drove; I had never seen cars move out of the way so fast. Side streets flew past us and I looked at the speedometer: one-twenty. He was flying, sixty kilometers over the limit in the middle of a busy city. I wanted him to go faster, but we needed to get there alive.

Chen rounded a corner, barely slowed down to do it, and I saw the school in view. I was out of the car before he even came to a full stop then sprinted toward the school at full speed. I ran into the building and down the hall toward the children’s classrooms. There were several officers standing over a pool of blood and yellow evidence cones marking the empty shells that had fallen to the ground. There was no body so the other officer must have died either en route to or in hospital.

“Where are my kids?” I said as I approached.

They all just stared at me blindly. “Where the fuck are my kids?”

“Detective Munroe?”

I nodded. The young officer’s face went stark white as he motioned for me to follow him. We walked down the hallway to another room where Julie was sitting with the four children. Kasia and Link were in tears, their little faces buried in smaller hands.

“Link, Kasia,” I said as I ran toward them and scooped them into my arms.

“The bad man got mommy,” Kasia said. “He shot those men and took her away.”

“I know honey, I know. We’re going to find her, okay. We’re going to get her back, I promise.”

They rested their heads on my shoulders and wept. I had to stay strong for them, even as my heart broke feeling their little bodies convulse against my chest in fits of crying. I looked up to see Julie was crying as well.

“I’m so sorry, Lincoln,” she said, just above a whisper. “God, I’m sorry.”

“I have to go,” I mouthed. “I have to get her back. Can you?” I looked down at the tops of their heads.

She nodded. “Of course. I’ll take care of them. Go. I’ll be praying for her.”

“Thank you,” I said. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn’t, but I didn’t care. I was praying for her as well, pleading with whatever force there was to keep her safe and bring her back to me.

I lowered Link and Kasia back to the ground and let go of them. They stared at me with eyes full of fear and pain, eyes I had never thought I would see when I looked at my children.

“I have to go. Julie is going to stay with you. I have to go get mommy.”

They both nodded through the tears and sobs.

“Daddy?” Link said.

I nodded.

“I want you to kill him.” The tears flowed faster and he started to cry uncontrollably. “I want you to kill him. I want you to kill him.” He just kept saying it over and over like a mantra.

“Link, don’t think about that. Think about mommy coming home.”

He looked up at me, red-rimmed eyes and a tear-streaked cheeks but there was no expression, just a face that looked carved out of stone.

I kissed them both on their foreheads and left the room, the sounds of them crying echoed in my ears as I walked away. It was as if I was abandoning them and I felt torn between the duty of a father and the duty of a spouse, but in the end it didn’t matter. My duty as a spouse was to save Kat, my duty as a father was to bring their mother home.

Chen and Kara were standing by the scene of the shooting. The pain in their eyes was unmistakable and it worsened when they saw me. If only they’d had more guards; with Kat volunteering in the classrooms though, two had been deemed enough. Had the three of them been out in the city, they would’ve only had two guards then as well.

“We’ve got some information, Link. The school’s surveillance system captured his vehicle. We’ve run the plate, turns out the car was stolen but hadn’t been reported yet. Every officer in France is looking for it right now.”

“He had this planned, Lincoln. I don’t think we could have seen it coming. The reason they couldn’t radio to headquarters was because of jamming devices. He had sent packages to both INTERPOL and the Lyon police department that were rigged to timers. When they activated, it shut down all police radio communications.”

“We also have images from the surveillance of Crawford himself. The disguise was extensive,” Chen said, handing me a still photo from the video. I wouldn’t have even recognized him. None of the facial features were the same. He must have used makeup and prosthetics to change his appearance. I wasn’t even considering an accomplice. Taking Kat was personal, there was no way it wasn’t him.

I bent down and looked at the evidence we had. I counted nine empty shells. He hadn’t been messing around when he shot the officers, he wanted to make sure they were dead. The blood pools were extensive and I was very surprised that the one was still alive.

“How bad is he?”

“She,” said one of the officers. “Shot twice in the chest, once in the stomach and the last one hit her in the left side of the face. She’s not doing well. She’s in critical right now, lost a lot of blood.”

“What about her vest?”

“It didn’t stop the rounds.”

“Fuck. Is that in the APB? Armour-piercing rounds?”

“Yes, we made sure that everyone knows he is armed and dangerous.”

“The one to the face, even if she survives…”

“She should be okay. The first responders said it was a mess but that it was wasn’t as bad as you’d think. Mostly cosmetic apparently, didn’t hit her brain or anything vital.”

I wanted her to survive, even though at that moment, I only cared if she lived because I needed to know exactly what happened.

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know, Link. We don’t know where he’s gone, where he lives, where he’s taken her. We can get out there and start looking for the car.”

“Where’s Eddie?”

“He’s still at headquarters.”

I didn’t say anything, just walked away and took out my phone.

“Eddie, it’s Lincoln.”

“Lincoln, I’m so sorry.”

“I know. I need you to help now, I need you to find him. I don’t care if it’s legal, I don’t care what you have to do, just find him.”

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know where to start. Everything comes up empty.”

“Just try, please.”

“Okay, I’ll keep you posted.”

I hung up the phone and walked back over to Chen and Kara. “Let’s go find that car.”

We drove around the city and its environs for two hours or more looking everywhere for any sign of Crawford or the car. I couldn’t count the number of police vehicles we saw on the road; it was as if they had mobilized the entire force. When it came down to it, we banded together like no other. And family was family, whether they wore the blue or not.

Finally my phone rang. It was Eddie.

“Okay, I’ve got something. The phone he called you from today, he bought that last night. It was a pay-as-you-go phone that he picked up from a convenience store. We’ve got him on video there. Then this morning, he dropped the two packages containing the radio jammers off at a courier. The two businesses were about a block from each other.”

“Where?”

“The
neuvi
è
me
arrondissement
… the ninth, it’s in the northwest.” Lyon was divided into several
arrondissements
- administrative districts - that acted somewhat as neighbourhoods. We weren’t far from the ninth.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t legal.”

“I don’t care.”

“I managed to get into the airport’s web history and found everyone who had searched flights from Lyon to Sri Lanka in the last couple of days. There weren’t many. I figured he planned for you to be gone at the time he…”

“Yeah, I know. What did you find?”

“I ran the IP addresses from the searches, hoping he hadn’t bothered to use proxies. I couldn’t wait for warrants and the internet providers weren’t cooperating despite the exigent circumstances, so I hacked them. There were seventeen IPs in Lyon but only two in the ninth.”

“Fuck, you found him?”

“I’ve got two addresses, hopefully one of them is his.”

“Which one is closer to the stores?”

“
Rue Chinard.
I’ll text the address to you. Click it and it’ll open in your map.”

“Thank you, Eddie.”

“Go get her back, Lincoln.”

My phone buzzed and chimed with the incoming text and I pulled up the address like Eddie had said. Chen had taken the driver’s seat again and I was in the front passenger side ready to navigate. Kara was in the back on the radio relaying the information.

“Go west, across the Saône.” We were in the small portion of the city sandwiched between the two major rivers, the Saône and the Rhône. The rivers turned the land into a long peninsula consisting of the first, second and fourth
arrondissements
. We were in the fourth when Eddie called and it didn’t take us long to get to our destination, not once Chen flipped the lights and sirens on and went back to driving at double the speed limit.

The apartment building was already surrounded by the time we arrived on
Rue Chinard
. Numerous cruisers were parked out front, lights flashing. I had made sure that Kara relayed the fact no one was to go in or attempt contact until I arrived. We were only a few minutes later than the first car and it had given them time to set up.