The Holiday Killer Read online

  The cut on her hand stung like a bitch, but she wasn't going to go home, not yet. She had to find her son, and she'd start with the location of the first victim, down along Highett Street.

  My baby boy. Jamie, where are you?

  Suddenly a truck sounded its horn at her as she swerved dangerously across the lanes, her concentration shot from stress. She was tired, but there was no way she was going to sleep. There was no way she could sleep, not until Jamie was found … one way or another.

  She finally pulled off the road and put her head in her bloody hands, covering her face. She sobbed, tears streaming down her face, as she screamed wordless pain at whatever god was listening. She pounded the steering wheel, bursting the seal the paramedics had patched over her wound, and not caring that she was leaving blood everywhere.

  "Give him back!" she screamed, cradling her bleeding hand to her chest, her head on the steering wheel as she sobbed. "Please, just give him back to me alive. Please, God!"

  *

  She woke to her cell screaming in her ear. The first rays of sunlight were brightening the sky and she stared at the phone, not daring to answer it, not able to even look at the number of the caller. She couldn't face it if it was Phil, asking where she was, and if she was coming home.

  She couldn't face the news of her son's death, either.

  Finally the ringing stopped. But she continued to stare at the phone, the silence of the city the only noise to break her thoughts.

  She jumped when the phone started ringing again. Slowly, her good hand shaking, she reached out and turned the phone over.

  Her skin turned icy. It was Phil, but she didn't think it would be good news, not now.

  "Hi, honey," she said, her voice trembling almost as much as her hands.

  "Where are you?" he asked, his voice slurred. He sounded like he'd been drinking.

  "I'm … out." She looked around the streets, trying to orient herself. Was she on Matthers Way or Flinders Street? "Have you been drinking?"

  "No," he said, in a tone that told her all she needed to know. "Why haven't you come home?"

  "I'm on my way home now," she said, starting the car and pulling out into the street, quiet in the pre-dawn light. "I'll see you soon."

  She hung up and headed for the main streets, speeding down the road. Her injured hand, curled up in her lap, was glued shut with her blood, making it harder to steer in a straight line.

  Lights flashed in her rearview mirror and Liz sighed in frustration, then pulled over. She turned the engine off and sat back, glowering out of the window. There were no other cars on the road; somehow, she'd run afoul of the only cop in sight.

  "Detective Donhowi!" the uniform exclaimed, wiping sweat from his brow. "Jesus, I wouldn't have pulled you over, if I knew—"

  "What are you babbling about, Officer?" she asked, a little more roughly than she'd meant to.

  "I just … well, I assumed you'd heard."

  Liz rubbed at her forehead, glancing at her phone. On the screen, she could see three missed messages. "Heard what, Fitzsimons? I'm in a bit of a hurry."

  The man swallowed. "They found your boy, ma'am. Near the station, at the sewerage outlet."

  Liz froze, staring at the officer. "Do you need to book me for anything?" she asked, her hands trembling as she put them on the steering wheel. "Can I go? I have somewhere important I have to be."

  "No, you're free to go." The man stepped away from the car. "I'm sorry, Detective."

  Liz didn't even bother to grunt. She turned the ignition, shifted into gear, and leapt down the road, heading for the sewer outlet near the police station at almost twice the speed limit.

  As she drove, she tried to convince herself that Jamie was alive, that the police had found him, cold, alone and shivering, at the outlet; that the Holiday Killer changed his mind and decided killing a policewoman's son on Christmas was too much. That she could hold him close and tell him that there was nothing more to be afraid of.

  But the traffic cop's final words kept playing in her head. I'm sorry. He was apologizing, as though he knew something terrible had happened—that Liz needed consoling and comforting. I'm sorry, I'm sorry…

  Before she knew it, she was pulling up in front of the sewer main, surrounded by emergency vehicles and press vans. She climbed out of the car, her legs almost giving way, and slipped under the police tape. She flashed her ID at the cops who moved to stop her, and almost ran down the embankment to where the outlet hit the river.

  When she saw her son, her legs did collapse.

  "Oh God, oh God, no!"

  Liz covered her face, forcing her injured hand open, trying to rub the image of her son from her eyes, but knowing that she would never be able to un-see him like this. Tears and blood covered her face, even as people yelled to get her out of there.

  Jamie was strung up over the main outflow, his arms held out by a clean, transparent rope made of fishing line, almost invisible in the dawn light. His arms were almost completely straight, despite the weight of his body pulling down on his joints. His head hung limp, his chin on his chest, which had been stripped to the bone, revealing his ribs.

  "No, let me be!" she screamed, pushing off her fellows' hands. "Jamie! Dear God, Jamie!"

  More details assaulted her memory as she fought the people holding her, trying to get to her son. His eyes had been removed, the holes where they had sat leaking blood down his cheeks, in a desperate parody of her grief-filled tears.

  "Come on, Liz, let's go, you don't need to see this—"

  "Get off me, get away from me!" She hit at the hands holding her, recognizing Lisa's voice but not responding to it. She shoved and bit, breaking free for a second before being set upon again.

  "Dear God, not him, please! My baby! Jamie!"

  His fingers had been cut off and shoved under his lips like grotesque teeth, probably secured with wire around his actual teeth. The skin of his legs and feet had been flayed off, hanging loose from his toes to flap in the small amount of wind. The forensics team was already starting to lower his body, trying to avoid dropping it into the sewer water below.

  "Liz, come with us," Lisa said, twisting Liz's good arm up behind her back and trying to turn her away from Jamie—away from the grizzly crime scene in front of her. "You have to calm down before you pass out. If you do that, I'll have to get Officer Clements and his partner to help me carry you up to the road, and you know I hate owing the uniforms. Come on, we'll go talk to Bill, he'll know more."

  Liz stumbled and reached out with her bloody injured hand to catch herself, her mind letting go of everything. She let Lisa lead her away, tears, blood and spit on her face, distressed and distant, Lisa pulling her in to cry on her shoulder.

  Phil was waiting for her at the top of the hill. Two officers had their hands on his shoulders, holding him back. Liz broke away from Lisa's loosening grip and dove into his arms to cry into his shoulder instead.

  "Is it bad?" he asked Lisa, his voice strained and his hug tight. He looked strangely detached, his father heading over to where they all stood.

  "I can't comment, you know that, Phil," Lisa said quietly, looking at the media cameras over their shoulders, trying to get any scrap of information they could. "I think you should take her home and keep her there until someone comes to talk to you both. I'll bring her car around when we're done here. Make sure you do something about her hand."

  Phil nodded, pulling Liz close and turning her back to the cruiser that had driven him. "I will. Just…" His voice broke and he swallowed hard, looking to his father, who had come to stand beside him. "Just keep him as safe as you can, okay?"

  Lisa nodded as Phil helped Liz to the passenger door. "Stick her in a bath, Phil. Help her forget what she saw."

  Bill clapped his hand on Phil's shoulder, squeezing, and Phil nodded. "Thank you, Lisa."

  Lisa nodded, tight-lipped, and gestured for the uniforms in the front seat to start the car.

  "I'll come with you. There's nothing I
can do here, and I've seen enough parents go to pieces recently to guess at how to help you both," Bill said quietly, his other hand on Liz's shoulder. "Liz, we'll get through this—"

  "'Get through this'?" she demanded, turning on her father-in-law. "Get over it? That's my son hanging from fishing line! Your goddamn grandson is dead because I couldn't find the bastard in time! This is my fault!"

  "No, Liz," Phil said as Bill lifted his hands in defense, stepping back from the steel in her voice. "This is not your fault."

  She climbed into the cruiser, slamming the door, and leaned forward, her head in her hands, her body shaking with sobs.

  She felt the car dip as Phil and Bill climbed in the cruiser with her, but didn't look up from her hands. The car took off, the somber atmosphere of the crime scene pervading the air of the cruiser, none of them knowing what to say.

  9

  The bath did Liz no good. She sat and cried, and when Lisa came to make the official announcement that Jamie's body had been found, she simply sat on the couch, staring at the corner of the room. Phil and Lisa both cast worried looks at her, but they didn't intervene.

  From then on, nightmares haunted Liz's dreams to the point where she had no choice but to get out of bed and sit on the couch, awake, but thinking. She could think only of Jamie, strung up over the sewer, an ode to the efforts of a madman who attacked young children.

  She'd started drawing—a hobby she hadn't picked up since she left college—but it was her only outlet for the things she'd seen.

  But all she drew was Jamie, hung over the sewer, in graphic detail. Every miniscule bruise was filled in, every drop of blood, to the point where looking at the images took some of the pain away, opened her detective mind to what was going on. It distracted her from the events and made her focus on the case, duplicates of every victim's file contained in her memory and her sketchpad.

  Phil made the mistake of asking what she was drawing once. When she showed him the detail on Jamie's skinned ribs, he'd gone to throw up and never requested to see them again. A police-funded psychiatrist came to visit a couple of days later, and she refused to look at the pictures directly, instead simply asking Liz about them.

  Planning the funeral had been horrible. She hadn't been able to focus on the arrangements, leaving Lisa and Bill to make most of the decisions. Phil added his own input, preferring that Jamie be buried on a Friday, but Liz didn't care one day to another. She took to pacing in front of his bedroom door whenever they asked about funeral arrangements, never quite able to bring herself to open it. She spent the time arguing with herself over whether or not she needed to see the spotless room, or whether to return to the kitchen and face reality.

  Eventually, she always returned to the kitchen, leaving the room closed off.

  She was going to find the Holiday Killer, and exact vengeance for Jamie's death.

  Fuck you, she thought, pacing in front of the door again while Phil and Rose argued over the color of the flowers in the kitchen. I'm coming for you. Your days are numbered, so count them again. Watch your back, fucker.

  *

  The day of his funeral, she stopped in front of Jaime's door, wearing her best black dress, her carefully applied makeup already streaking down her cheeks. She put her hand on the door, sighing. It was time.

  Then, taking a deep breath, she turned the door handle, pushed the light wood open, and stepped inside.

  The room hadn't been disturbed since he'd been taken, and she stood in the middle of the room, looking around at the carefully arranged toys, the folded clothes, the swept floor. Forensics hadn't found a single piece of evidence in the room. To them, it looked like Jamie had cleaned the place up himself before being taken.

  She looked at the bed and the perfectly straight rug, and gently lifted Jamie's second-favorite toy—a bear his father had given him when he was three—to look into its glassy eyes. Tears welling in her own eyes, she threw it across the room and looked at the toys gathered on his bedside table. The space that once held his five-inch plastic robot stood empty, covered in a thin layer of fingerprint dust.

  He loved that damn robot.

  She grabbed the remaining toys and, with the force of her anger and grief, hurled them across the room to thump into the wall. Screaming her rage, she ripped the sheets off his bed, knocked his clothes off the chair, and generally did everything she could to mess up the room.

  Exhausted, she finally collapsed in the middle of the room as Phil, Bill, and Lisa barreled into the room, looking around in horror at the mess she'd created.

  Liz opened her eyes from her sobbing to see the bear sitting in front of her knees, watching her. She picked it up and cradled it to her chest, just as she had Jamie when he was a baby, the bear's head over her shoulder. Phil and Lisa rushed forward to help her to her feet, ignoring the smears of makeup that covered her cheeks, and helped her from the room.

  10

  After the funeral, Bill and Lisa dropped Liz and Phil off at home. Liz headed straight for their room while Phil headed to the kitchen for a beer, neither of them talking to each other.

  It's time. He's not going to hurt anyone else.

  When she got to her room, though, Liz scrambled through her clothes for her gun, but could not find it.

  God fucking dammit, they took it! Shit!

  She opened the drawer of her desk and dragged out her old pistol, hidden in the secret compartment at the back of the drawer. Phil didn't know about this gun, or it wouldn't still be there. Her father gave it to her before he died, and she'd kept it safe and well oiled since. She retrieved some ammunition and loaded the gun, tucking it into the empty holster thrown over the chair, and settling the holster over her shoulders before she covered it all with a coat. She glanced in the mirror, checking to make sure it didn't look out of place.

  Then she grabbed some extra bullets, not knowing if she would have cause to use them tonight, but needing to have them available if she did. She tucked them into a pocket, wrapping a scarf around her neck to ward off the New Year's chill.

  She crept through the house, quiet as a mouse, and stopped before she reached the kitchen. She peered around the corner, looking for Phil.

  He was asleep, headphones over his ears and an empty bottle of bourbon beside his hand. So she slipped out the front door, taking the keys to his car from the tray as she went.

  She rolled silently down the driveway and started the car on the road, careful not to cause too much noise. Shifting into gear, she drove off into the coming night, choosing a random direction to drive in, and hoping she would find the bastard.

  That night, Liz patrolled the streets, her gun at her hip. Around 1 in the morning, a brand new Lexus slipped into traffic next to her and she glanced at it, instantly curious. What business would a rich guy have at this time of morning, this close to the docklands?

  A small, barely obvious line of darkness was dripping from the back door, down the white paint. The light of a streetlight lit it up momentarily, the bright red of fresh blood attracting her attention. She sped up casually, and glanced in the window at the driver.

  Mark Windsor.

  Adrenaline coursing through her blood, she followed the car, fingering her gun. Could this be the lead she needed, the detail she didn't have before? He was using rich cars to move the kids, not a van or something that would stand out.

  She followed him a block over, and realized he was heading to the docklands, barely a block from the station, and near to where Jamie was found. With so few cars on the road, she was forced to race ahead of him and park the car, then wait for him.

  As she parked, she spotted movement in one of the fallen-down warehouses. There was definitely someone in there.

  Liz climbed from the car, her gun at the ready, watching the place where she'd seen the movement. The person she'd seen had slipped around the back of the building, but there was no way to tell if anyone else was still in there. The Holiday Killer worked with someone else, the evidence said. And she was ce
rtain that he was heading here now. She needed to know if his accomplices were here as well.

  She crept closer to the building, glancing through the tumbledown walls at the small shape hidden under an upturned table. She approached slowly, pulling a flashlight from her pocket and using it to aim her gun.

  "Hello?" she whispered, stepping up to the body on the ground. She toed it gently and it rolled, giving her a view of the face.

  Her eyes had been stripped from her body, an incision opened up under her chin, though what it was for, Liz couldn't tell.

  What she could tell, though, was that the girl was clearly dead.

  Liz pulled out her phone, called in a quiet rendezvous with dispatch, and stepped back, looking around. This was Tiffany Heart, the eleventh victim of the Holiday Killer, and the third girl to be taken by the madman. The scanner in her car had called in her kidnapping less than an hour ago.

  Suddenly the anger that Liz had been suppressing in the week since Jamie's murder bubbled to the surface. Rage colored her feelings, convincing her that she could murder the killer if she found him. Guilt edged up her throat, but she swallowed it down, forcing herself to forget that she could have caught the killer sooner, that she could have stopped this useless murder.

  And Jamie's.

  But I will stop him now. He will kill no one else.

  Her hands shaking from a mix of nerves, excitement, and dread, she pocketed the flashlight, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and stepped forward carefully, feeling around with her toes.

  "This is Special Detective Donhowi of the Matryville Central Police Department. You are surrounded. Lay your weapons down and you will not be harmed."

  A can rattled toward her right and she aimed at it, trying to see what caused the noise. She squinted in the dark, but nothing moved. Nothing shifted, or breathed. She was alone.

  She stepped sideways, keeping her eyes open, searching. She knew he was here, she knew he was watching. And she knew he knew it.