Hush Little Baby (7 page)

Ronald Young sat chained to the table on the other side of the one-way glass. The uncertainty that had been evident when he was arrested had gone, and now he just looked plain pissed. Yoko was in the small annexe room next door. There were three detectives with her, two on her left, one on the right. She was sitting front and centre, the best seat in the house. She sipped her coffee. It was actually pretty good. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she’d hit the day at a full sprint and missed breakfast. Nothing new there. Her body had long ago adapted to a diet of caffeine and nicotine.

Young was sitting there glaring at the table, his hands, the mirror. His body was full of tension and getting tighter with every passing second. Shoulders, arms, face. His jaw kept moving like he was chewing gum. Yoko kept one eye on the clock above the one-way glass, and one eye on what was happening in the interview room, and waited for the explosion. Young had last blown up three minutes and twenty-two seconds ago, and before that he’d lasted three minutes and fifteen seconds. On the basis of that she reckoned they had another thirty seconds or so before he blew again.

In the end he lasted eighteen. The second hand reached twelve and he tried to stand up. The chain attached to the handcuffs rattled tight, so he only made it half the way up before he was jerked to an abrupt stop. This only enraged him further. He rattled the chain hard against the table and screamed for his lawyer. His face was bright red and the tendons and veins in his neck were standing out.

He stopped as suddenly as he started. One moment he was raging, the next he was slumped back in his chair, all the fight gone. Then the process started up again. He glared at his hands, the table, the mirror. The thoughts going around in his head getting him more and more wound up. Yoko sat sipping her coffee, fascinated. It was like watching a wildlife programme on National Geographic.

She glanced up at the clock and began counting off the seconds until the next eruption. Before that could happen, the interview room door swung open and Dixon entered. The sergeant was accompanied by a man who was presumably Young’s lawyer. Yoko had met enough lawyers to be confident that she’d called this one right. What’s more, she was betting that he wasn’t particularly successful. This was not someone who was fast-tracking towards a partnership and a corner office, this was someone with a rented office in one of the cheaper districts and an advertising board on the sidewalk. No way would a big city lawyer be caught dead wearing a suit that shade of brown, or that badly fitting.

The guy walked around to Young’s side of the table, confirming her suspicions. The body language during their brief introduction made it evident that they’d met before. Yoko wondered if this might be the same guy who’d represented Young during the custody battle. The lawyer sat down, leant in towards his client and whispered something in his ear. The room microphone wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up what he was saying, but she had a pretty good idea of what had just passed between them. Keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking.

Dixon got settled in the seat opposite and went through the preliminaries for the camera: names, date, time, charges. Her first question was met with silence. So was the second, and the third. She asked her fourth question and Young opened his mouth as though he was about to say something. The anger was boiling up to the surface again. His hands were pulled into tight fists and the chain was stretched as far as it would go. His face was tight too.

The lawyer was ready for this. He laid a hand on Young’s arm and when that failed to elicit any sort of response, he dug his fingers into the muscle. The action was very deliberate, and, to start with, Yoko thought her eyes were playing tricks. She’d seen lawyers do a lot of weird and wonderful things over the years, but she’d never seen this particular move. Young turned and gave his lawyer a what-the-hell glare. The lawyer didn’t say a word, just shot him a warning look.

For the next half an hour the interview followed the same pattern. Dixon would ask questions and Young would just sit there with his mouth shut tight. A couple of times he looked ready to blow up again, but the lawyer put a hand on his arm and that seemed to bring him back down.

Yoko’s cell rang and three pairs of eyes swivelled towards her. She mouthed an apology and took out her phone.
UNKNOWN CALLER
had flashed up on the screen. She didn’t recognise the number. She turned off the ringer and put the cell away.

Less than a minute later the phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out, glanced at the screen.
UNKNOWN CALLER
and the same number as before. She took a closer look at the number. A landline number rather than a cell, and she was pretty sure that it was prefixed with a Tampa code. That got her curious. The only people in Tampa who might want to call her were in this building. If they wanted to get hold of her, they could knock on the door and speak to her in person.

She connected the call and said a tentative ‘hello’. All she got in response was the crackle of static and the sound of heavy breathing. Great. Some pervert had got hold of her number. She was about to hang up when the person doing the heavy breathing spoke.

‘Hey there, Special Agent Tanaka. I think I need you to come get me.’

The voice was thick and slurred, and she recognised it straightaway. She held up the phone. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this.’ Two of the detectives were still looking in her direction, while the third’s attention had drifted back to the interview room. Without waiting for a response, she slipped out of the room.

‘Are you drunk?’ she hissed into the mouthpiece.

‘Of course I’m not drunk,’ Winter slurred.

‘Jesus, you are drunk. It’s not even lunchtime. What the hell are you playing at?’

‘Okay, I might have had one or two.’

‘Look, I’m busy here. I can’t just drop everything and come running to get you. Whatever mess you’ve got yourself in, it’s your problem not mine, so deal with it.’

‘That’s the thing. It’s kind of your problem too. I think I might have crashed your car.’

‘You think! Either you have or you haven’t!’

‘Okay, okay, okay, I crashed the car, mom. But it wasn’t my fault.’

Yoko forced herself to take a deep breath and tried to regain her composure. Winter was a total liability. What the hell had she been thinking, bringing him to Tampa? She was sorely tempted to let him clean up his own mess. That would teach him. Then again, he was right. This was her problem, too. After all it was her signature on the hire-car agreement.

‘You still there?’ he slurred. ‘You’ve gone awful quiet.’

‘Was anyone else involved?’

‘No, I hit a hydrant. The damn thing came out of nowhere and kaboom! Not my smartest move. I think I’ve wrecked the axle. You should have heard the noise it made when I drove off it. And there’s water spraying out everywhere. It’s like a fountain or something.’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘I think I might have banged my head. I’m in Seminole Heights, by the way. Brookfield Avenue.’

Yoko repeated the street name in her head, consigning it to memory.

‘You can’t miss me. I’m next to the trashed fire hydrant.’

‘This isn’t funny.’ She sighed. ‘Look, just stay where you are. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

‘Are you sure this is the right street?’

 Yoko was looking out the side window of the cab, expecting chaos and destruction. All she saw was a quiet residential neighbourhood sinking in the torpor of a sleepy workday morning. There were no wrecked cars, no fountaining fire hydrants, no drama whatsoever.

‘This is the address you gave me.’

She looked out the window again, then stretched over to the middle of the cab so she could see around the passenger seat. The view out the windshield was the same as the view from the side window. Wide streets, clapboard houses, trees lining the sidewalk. She couldn’t see any sign of Winter, or the Chevy.

‘So what do you want to do?’ the cabbie asked. ‘Do you want to get out here, or do you want me to drive you somewhere else?’

Before she could answer there was a loud bang on the side window. She turned around, heart jumping, and saw Winter grinning and waving through the glass.

‘Looks like I’m getting out here. Are you okay to wait?’

‘Sure. I’ll keep the meter running.’

Yoko took a moment to compose herself before getting out. Right now, she really wasn’t in the mood to deal with Winter’s bullshit. She did a slow count to ten then opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

‘Did you miss me?’

‘Like a hole in the head, Jefferson. I can’t help noticing that there’s a distinct lack of wrecked cars around here.’

‘Yeah, about that, I might have exaggerated slightly.’

‘And you’re not drunk.’

‘God, no. It’s way too early.’

‘Okay, you have precisely two seconds to tell me what’s going on here.’

‘Don’t you want to know where I’ve been all morning?’

Yoko sighed and lit a cigarette. ‘Okay,’ she said evenly. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I’ve been at the
Tampa Tribune
’s offices. Do you want to know what I was doing there?’

He had an expectant expression on his face, the sort of expression you saw on small kids who couldn’t wait to tell you about their adventures. All Yoko could think was what the hell had he done this time?

‘I’ll tell you what I was doing there, shall I? I was going through their back issues. And why would I be doing that, I hear you ask.’

He stopped talking again and stared expectantly.

Another sigh. ‘And what were you doing there, Jefferson?’

The expectant look turned into a smile. ‘That would be telling.’

Yoko gave him a blank look and said nothing.

The smile turned into a laugh. ‘Okay, okay, since I’ve dragged you all the way out here, I’ll share. I’m thinking a show-and-tell might be the way forward.’

Before she could respond, he hopped off the sidewalk and headed across the street. Yoko took a last quick drag on her cigarette, crushed the butt into the gutter, then paid the cab driver. She caught up with Winter at a mailbox belonging to a small bungalow. He was standing at the end of the driveway, staring up at the house. The wood had been painted light grey and brightly coloured drapes hung in the window. The small yard was tidy and unfenced and sloped gently down towards the sidewalk. Palm trees rustled in the wind, the shadow of the leaves dancing on the grass. An old sun-blasted Ford Escort was parked under a plastic-topped canopy.

Winter touched the number on the mailbox, nodded to himself, then made his way up the driveway to the house. His hand snaked out as he passed the car, fingertips dragging across the hot metal. Yoko almost asked him what he was doing. The only thing that stopped her was the idea that he might actually give her an answer. At the top of the driveway he turned left and stopped at the front door. He knocked, a quick cheery
rat-a-tat-tat.
.

‘What are we doing here, Jefferson? And I want a straight answer.’

‘We’re here to see Kerry Adams. We need to talk to her in connection with the investigation.’

‘I’m afraid you’re a bit late there. We’ve already caught The Sandman.’

He flashed her a look that gave her an icy feeling inside. ‘Really? And when you say you’ve caught The Sandman, what you mean is that you’ve got a man in custody on suspicion of the murders.’

Yoko didn’t say anything.

‘You remember I said there was nothing interesting about the autopsy reports? I kind of lied about that. The pattern of knife wounds looked random because the attacks on the moms had been carried out in a frenzy, right? And they were random. Well, mostly random. Mom One had a chest wound on her left side and Mom Two had an almost identical wound that was a couple of inches lower and guess what? Mom two was a couple of inches shorter than Mom One. I’m betting that these were the first wounds that were inflicted. The unsub would have been standing in front of their victims. Because of the angles involved you’re looking at a shorter-than-average man, or an average-sized woman. And because everyone was looking for The Sand
man
, this detail was missed. And you wonder why nicknames piss me off so much.’

Before she could respond to that, the door opened. The woman who answered was average height and looked much older than she actually was. At a glance, Yoko would have said that she was in her early forties. At a second glance she thought you could knock the best part of a decade off of that estimate. She looked more closely, searching for evidence of drug or alcohol abuse, but the woman just wasn’t giving off that vibe. There was tragedy here but it wasn’t the sort of tragedy that came from a needle or a bottle.

‘Can I help you?’

Kerry’s voice was pleasant, her manner polite. Like a soccer mom at a bake sale. Yoko glanced at her left hand. No rings, engagement or wedding. Her eyes were blue and she was a natural blonde.

‘I’m hoping that you can help us,’ said Winter. ‘We’re from the FBI, and you’re a murderer. Or should that be murderess?’

The colour drained from Kerry’s face. Yoko felt as though the colour was draining from her own face too. Her mind was racing through possibilities, sifting through the evidence. All of a sudden it wasn’t a question of whether or not she’d called this one wrong, it was more a question of how wrong she’d got things.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Kerry was trying to keep her voice level but it wasn’t working. There was a tremor there that she couldn’t quite hide.

‘And that’s the wrong response. What you should be doing is asking to see our badges.’

A glance at Winter, a glance at Yoko, eyes wide and terrified. She looked like a cornered animal. She glanced once more at Winter, then turned and ran into the house.

‘What the hell have you done?’ Yoko hissed.

‘Hey, I’m not looking for a medal, but a thank you would be nice. While everyone else has been looking in the wrong place, I’ve found the killer. Come on, that’s got to be worth something.’

Yoko drew her gun, stepped into the living room and stopped dead. One wall was covered in a collage of overlapping photographs. Every bit of space was covered. The sight overloaded her senses to the point where she momentarily forgot all about Kerry Adams. Something about the collage struck her as just plain wrong. It shouldn’t have elicited this response because it was just a collection of snapshots, but it did. Partly it was the way they’d been haphazardly stuck to the wall, but mostly it was the sheer volume. There were hundreds of photographs, thousands. The common thread was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl. She’d been cut from the same mould as Suzy Devlin, the same mould as the two little girls who’d been murdered before Suzy. Line them up and you could have been looking at a gang of best friends.

There were photographs from the birth, baby photographs, toddler photographs, photographs showing a little girl getting older and cheekier and loving life. Pictures with mom, pictures with dad, pictures of the whole family together. There were photos taken on vacation, and photos taken on day trips, and photos taken for no other reason than she was smiling her fantastic smile. Happy memories from happier times.

Because there were a finite number of pictures to work with, the same photographs had been repeated time and time again. And the reason for that was because the little girl was dead. As far as Yoko could tell there were no pictures showing her older than six or seven. One look at the wall was enough to wipe away any lingering doubts that Winter might be wrong about this.

‘The little girl was called Mary Beth Adams,’ Winter told her. He was talking fast, the words coming out in an excited rush. ‘She was seven when she died. She’d gone to the store with her dad but they never got there. A truck ran a red light and smashed into their car. Mary Beth was killed instantly, but her dad survived. Kerry was at home getting everything together for a surprise birthday party. That’s why her husband had gone to the store. She needed Mary Beth out of the way so she could get things organised.’

A sound from the back of the house got Yoko moving. She waved Winter behind her, then followed the sound. The door in the back wall opened on to a short corridor. There were three doors leading off it, all open. Yoko moved carefully down the corridor, checking each room they passed. Bathroom, Kerry’s bedroom, Mary Beth’s room.

Kerry was sitting on Mary Beth’s bed clutching a large, cuddly Miss Piggy toy, her knees drawn in to her chest. Yoko figured that the room hadn’t been touched since the day of the accident. Toys, games and clothes lay strewn over the floor, the bed was unmade, the drawing on the desk had been started but would never be finished. It was as though Mary Beth had gone to dinner and would be back at any moment to do some more work on her drawing, or play with the games on the floor.

The desk had been positioned under the window where the light was best, the chair half in, half out. Coloured pencils lay scattered across the surface. The drawing displayed some talent and a lot of patience. Inspiration had clearly come from the posters of Disney princesses on the walls. That said, there was evidence that the princesses’ days had been numbered. The poster of a boy band that Yoko had never heard of looked much newer than the Disney ones. This was the room of a little girl who was about to move from one phase of childhood into the next.

Except that was never going to happen now.

 ‘Some days it hurts so much I wonder if I’ve already died and gone to hell. Maybe this is hell.’ Kerry was talking quietly, the cuddly toy pressed up against her mouth muffling the words. ‘Mary Beth was so beautiful. She was my angel. Why did she have to die? Every day I wake up wishing I was dead, but it doesn’t happen.’

Winter pushed past Yoko and stepped into the room. She flashed him a warning look and waved him back, but he ignored her. Her first instinct was to grab hold of him and drag him back into the corridor, but this was a situation where sudden movements would not be tolerated. Move too fast and Kerry was going to get spooked.

 ‘So why didn’t you kill yourself?’ he asked Kerry. ‘That’s got to be better than murdering those innocent girls.’

‘Because I’m already in hell!’ she screamed at him.

The burst of anger was so sudden and unexpected it made Yoko flinch. There was raw fury in Kerry’s face. No tears, but that’s because all her tears had been used up long ago. Winter was still giving off a vibe like this was one big game. It was the same attitude that he’d been displaying all the way through this, and it made Yoko nervous. This was not a game.

‘You don’t understand,’ she added quietly. ‘You’ll never understand.’

‘Help us to understand,’ he said gently.

Kerry gave a humourless laugh and shook her head. ‘I’m in hell and Mary Beth is in heaven and I’ll never see my baby again. That’s all you need to know.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.’

‘Of course it was my fault!’ Kerry yelled at him. ‘I’m her mom. It was my job to protect her. I didn’t do that and she died and it’s all my fault. It should have been me in that car, not her.’

‘And should is a dirty word. You should do this, you should do that, you should do the next thing. Every day we make a thousand decisions. Those decisions are based on the information available at the time, and they’re based on the flawed premise that we can somehow control the future. None of us can do that. There’s always a chance that a rogue variable will come into play. Like some truck driver running a red light.’

‘And what do you know about anything? You’re just a kid.’

Winter shrugged. ‘Well, I know that you knocked on the doors of your victims and when they answered they saw you standing there looking distraught. They asked you what the matter was, and you gave them some story, something about how your kid had disappeared, perhaps. They would have asked you in because they felt sorry for you, but before they could call the police, you would have pulled out a knife. Does that sound about right?’

Kerry just stared at him. Yoko was staring too. She felt she should be saying or doing something, but Winter was a dozen steps ahead and she was just doing her best to keep up. He’d stepped into Kerry’s head and was seeing everything through her eyes. It was like the time he’d turned into Valentino all over again.

‘Once you’d bound and gagged the moms you went through to the girls’ bedrooms. It was late and it was a school night so they would have been fast asleep. You watched them sleeping for a while, and then you took a pillow and smothered them. You used make-up to disguise any discolouration, then you tucked them in. But before you left you read them a story and sang them a lullaby because that’s what you used to do for Mary Beth.’

Yoko had thought that Kerry was all cried out, but that was something else she was mistaken about. A single tear rolled down Kerry’s left cheek. The distant look in her eyes made it appear as though she was having trouble focusing.

She started to sing in a whispering voice that was cracked and out of tune, and heartbreakingly sad. ‘Hush little baby, don’t say a word, papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird.’

‘And if that mockingbird won’t sing, papa’s going to buy you a diamond ring.’ In contrast, Winter’s voice was gentle and surprisingly sweet. It was in tune, too. The way it seeped through the silence seemed somehow ominous and sinister, a perversion of something beautiful.