Hush Little Baby (8 page)

Yoko took this as her cue to step in. ‘It’s over, Kerry. You don’t have to do this anymore.’

‘You’re right, I don’t.’

She was speaking in a flat voice that set the alarm bells ringing inside Yoko’s head. This was the sound of someone who was about to step off the ledge. The resignation in her voice was absolute. Without realising what she was doing, Yoko raised her gun. At that exact same moment, Kerry dropped the cuddly toy and pulled out a large carving knife from under the pillow.

‘Put the knife down, Kerry.’

Yoko sighted along the gun barrel, her hands steady, the left supporting the right. Kerry looked up, her eyes deader than ever, then very deliberately put the knife up to her own throat. She got to her feet and started walking towards the middle of the room.

‘Stay where you are and put the knife down.’ Yoko was working hard to keep her voice level, to squash the panic down. Kerry ignored her and kept on walking. Yoko glanced over her shoulder. ‘Jefferson, I want you to go into the hall.’

Winter didn’t move. He was staring at Kerry like she was a newly discovered life form.

‘Now!’

Her warning came a fraction of a second too late. Kerry suddenly darted forward, heading straight towards him. The knife was high in the air and starting to arc downwards. Yoko’s training took over and she squeezed the trigger. The sound of the gun was deafening, the room too small to hold the explosion. Kerry’s momentum carried her forward until she collided with Winter. They both crashed to the floor and ended up in a heap at the foot of the bed. The knife kept going too, tumbling uselessly onto the carpet.

‘Get her off of me! Get her off now!’

Winter sounded shocked and scared, but mostly he sounded disgusted. All the cool had gone, all the arrogance. He was wriggling beneath Kerry, trying to work himself free. Yoko ran over and pressed her fingers against Kerry’s neck, checking for a pulse, not feeling one. She glanced at her chest, searching for movement, and saw nothing.

‘What the hell are you doing? Just get her off of me.’

She grabbed hold of Kerry’s shoulder and pulled hard. The body moved more easily than it should have done. When you were moving a dead weight you always got resistance, and that just wasn’t there. Yoko started backing away, but wasn’t quick enough. Kerry suddenly rolled onto her back and her eyes sprang open. She was moving fast for someone who’d just been shot, adrenalin fuelling her. She grabbed hold of Yoko’s foot and pulled, knocking her off balance and sending her tumbling to the floor.

Yoko’s head hit the floor so hard she saw dark spots. The Glock slipped from her hand and landed a couple of feet away. She flipped over onto her front and scrambled desperately towards it, but before she could get there Kerry landed on top of her, Yoko thrashed to the right, thrashed to the left. She thrashed to the right again, putting everything she had into the move, and somehow managed to roll onto her back. Kerry was on top of her, eyes manic, blood seeping out of a shoulder wound. She’d managed to get hold of the knife again. She thrust with it and Yoko brought her arms into the shape of an X, blocking it. The blade came close enough to graze her cheek, close enough for her to feel cold steel.

Too close.

Kerry shifted slightly, repositioning herself. Her arm went up. Yoko wriggled around trying to break free, trying to knock Kerry off balance, trying to buy a few more precious seconds. She’d blocked that first thrust but she didn’t think she’d be so lucky a second time. Kerry’s arm came down towards her and she forced herself to keep her eyes open as she brought her arms into an X shape. She instinctively knew that she wasn’t moving fast enough to block the knife, that her reactions were too slow. She was going to die and there was nothing she could do.

Because her ears were still ringing, the second gunshot seemed much quieter than the first. Even so, it was one of the best sounds she’d ever heard. One second she was staring at the polished blade of the carving knife, convinced she was about to die, the next she was watching as a fine mist of blood and brains spattered against her face, and even that was okay since it was a damn sight better than the alternative. The knife stopped in mid-air and Kerry tumbled to the side. She was definitely dead this time.

Yoko struggled to her feet and sat heavily on the bed. The adrenalin buzzing through her body was making her feel lightheaded and nauseous. She’d heard stories of meth heads keeping going with half-a-dozen bullets pumped into them, but this was the first time she’d witnessed anything like that for herself. Granted, Kerry was running on adrenalin rather than drugs, but the end result was similar enough to make no real difference. And adrenalin could be pretty potent stuff. How many times had she read stories about unlikely heroes performing superhuman feats? Moms lifting up cars to rescue their kid, that sort of thing.

Winter was standing in the middle of the room looking lost and bewildered. Her Glock was hanging from his outstretched arm and he was staring at Kerry Adams’s lifeless body as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

‘Are you okay, Jefferson?’

‘Not really.’

‘We need to get out of here.’ Winter’s eyes were still glued to Kerry’s lifeless body. He was talking fast, the words tumbling out. ‘I’m figuring you didn’t tell anyone you were coming to meet me. What were you going to say? That you needed to go pick up your drunk colleague? I can’t see that happening. So nobody knows we’re here, which has got to work to our advantage, right? Also, the street’s quiet. I haven’t seen anyone. That means we can slip away and nobody will be any the wiser.’ He paused a second. ‘Except that doesn’t work, does it?’

Yoko shook her head. ‘No, it doesn’t. One look at that wall of photographs and any halfway decent detective will realise they’re dealing with something that goes way outside the ordinary. Maybe they’ll connect this to The Sandman straightaway, maybe they won’t. Whichever way it plays out that connection will get made at some point. So they come into Mary Beth’s bedroom and find Kerry’s body. They’re going to think they’re dealing with a vigilante. So they dig a little deeper and discover that they’re not dealing with one vigilante they’re dealing with two. Our prints are all over the house, our DNA. The bullets came from my service gun. What’s more, the time of death corresponds with the amount of time it would take me to rush over here after receiving a mysterious phonecall, a call that was witnessed by three detectives from Tampa PD’s homicide department.’

Winter rubbed his mouth and let out a long sigh. He laid the gun on the bed, then sat down beside Yoko. His gaze didn’t stray from Kerry.

 ‘Shit. So what do we do?’

‘First we call Sergeant Dixon. When she gets here we tell her exactly what happened, and I mean everything. I’m talking full disclosure. The only way to make this go away is by being completely honest. Then you’re going to beg for her forgiveness. The good news is that since The Sandman has been taken out of play she probably won’t be too upset.’

‘And what happens to you?’

‘I expect there will be an investigation. I’ll be suspended while this is going on, hopefully on full pay. Again, because there was a happy-ish ending, I should get to keep my job.’

‘And what about me?’

‘That one’s up to you, Jefferson. While the dust is settling, you should give some serious thought to joining the FBI. I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble getting in. You impressed a lot of people with what you did in Maryland last year. Then again, if you think that you’ll be happier playing piano for tourists and old folk, that’s your call.’

She paused a moment, waited until she had his full attention. He kept glancing over at Kerry. She understood his fascination. The first time she saw a dead body she was exactly the same. She’d wanted to look away, but just couldn’t make herself do that. Not for long, at any rate. No sooner had she made herself look away, she was staring again. Winter turned to face her. She could sense his confidence and arrogance returning. The shadow of a smile was hiding just below the surface.

‘I want you to listen to me, Jefferson, and I want you to listen carefully. If you do come and work for us, you need to grow up fast. This isn’t a game. We’re dealing with real people and real lives. Believe me when I tell you that this is as real as it gets.’ She nodded towards Kerry. ‘She should not be dead. I get to carry that one on my conscience to my grave. If you have a conscience, I hope you do the same.’

‘But she probably would have been executed anyway.’

‘And you’re missing the point. That was not our call to make. No one should get to play judge, jury and executioner. No one. That’s too much power for any one person to wield.’

Winter had nothing to say to that. She gave him almost a whole minute to respond and, when he didn’t, took out her cellphone and called Dixon. Their conversation was short, uncomfortable and predictable. Yoko hung up and put her cell away.

‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ Winter was staring at Kerry’s body again.

Yoko sighed. ‘Yes, unfortunately I have.’

‘It’s nothing like I’d imagined.’

The fact that he’d imagined himself killing someone didn’t surprise her in the slightest. She would have been more surprised if he hadn’t. Given what little she knew of him, he’d probably imagined it down to the last detail. The problem was that reality never matched the fantasy.

‘The Sandman was never a delivery driver, was he?’

Winter shook his head. ‘The mothers weren’t the principal targets. That was the mistake everyone made. It was always about those little girls.’

‘And you worked that out from the autopsy reports?’

‘No, the autopsy reports just confirmed what I already suspected. Heidi’s murder was all about anger and Suzy’s was about love. I can see why people read the scene like they did, though. When I first looked at the photographs that was my interpretation, too. The mom was the target and the kid was collateral damage. That’s the way it looked, and it made sense. It was the make-up that changed my mind. Think about the timings. How long did it take for Kerry to hack Heidi to death? Forty or fifty seconds, a minute and a half, tops. That attack was completely frenzied. And how long did it take for her to smother Suzy, and do her make-up, and arrange her in the bed?’

He let the question hang there. Yoko didn’t answer because there was no answer expected of her.

‘Heidi was murdered out of anger, though. You got that much right. Where you went wrong was your interpretation of that anger. This wasn’t the anger of an ex-husband who’d been denied visitation rights, this was the anger of a mom who’d failed to protect her child. Whenever Kerry killed one of the moms it was like she was killing herself.’

‘And this is exactly why the FBI needs you, Jefferson. You can look at a photograph of a murdered kid and see it as an act of love. I don’t know anyone else who could do that. I sure as hell didn’t.’

It was Winter’s turn to keep quiet.

‘So how did you work out that Kerry Adams did it?’

‘After trawling through the back issues of the
Tampa Tribune
, I spoke to a couple of the journalists there, too. I wanted to find out about any little girls who’d died over the last four or five years. My next step would have been to go visit the moms and talk to them. The one thing I knew for a fact was that she would be still be living in Tampa. Her daughter had died here, where else would she be? She wouldn’t want to leave her all alone.’

‘You said you “would have” visited the moms. Why didn’t you?’

Now he smiled. He was so wrapped up in what he was saying that he’d forgotten what just happened here. ‘I caught a break there. One of the journalists I spoke to remembered that Mary Beth’s father committed suicide on the anniversary of the accident. Guess when that was?’

Yoko didn’t need to guess. ‘Just before the first two murders. That was the trigger.’

‘Exactly fifteen days before,’ Winter agreed. ‘It was just too much like a coincidence. It had to be her.’

‘Okay, here’s the thing I don’t get. While you were running around acting like this was an episode of
Scooby Doo
, we were out looking for a delivery driver with anger-management issues. And the reason we were doing that was because you led us to that conclusion. Why would you do something like that? Was it because you wanted to prove that you were smarter than everyone else? Was that it?’

Winter was staring at Kerry’s body again. The arrogance had faded, leaving him looking uncertain. Yoko thought there might be a touch of embarrassment in there as well.

‘Jesus, that was the reason, wasn’t it?’ Yoko shook her head sadly. ‘For someone so bright, you can be pretty dumb at times. Do you know that?’

He was still looking over at the body. ‘I guess I screwed up.’

‘Yes, you did screw up, but here’s a newsflash: people make mistakes. What’s important is that you learn from each situation, and you try not to make those same mistakes again. That’s the real difference between smart and stupid. So which one are you?’

Winter snorted a small humourless half-laugh.  ‘Believe me, I won’t be making that mistake again.’

‘No, what you’ll do is make different ones. And if you’re half as smart as you think you are, then you’ll learn from those too.’

Yoko glanced down at Kerry’s body. This was not the way she would have wanted this to go down, but the bottom line was that The Sandman wouldn’t be claiming any more victims and that had to be worth something. But, if that was the case, why did this victory feel so damn hollow?

It was a complete and utter tragedy. The photographs in the living room were evidence of a family that had once been happy together. And now that family no longer existed. When you got down to it the reason they were dead was because Mary Beth and her father had driven through that intersection at the wrong time. A couple of seconds earlier or a couple of seconds later and the truck would have missed them. There would have been blaring horns and cursing and sighs of relief, but Mary Beth would still be alive. Her mom would be alive too, because the chain of events that led to this moment would have been broken. It was such a waste. Sometimes she hated this job. Really hated it. In the distance, she could hear the sound of sirens getting closer. She got to her feet and motioned for Winter to stand up.

‘Come on, Jefferson, let’s go face the music.’