Part 8 (2/2)
Jacob Yeller was dumped in the bath. His throat was an angry red open wound and his s.h.i.+rt was splattered with more blood than surely the human body held. Randall turned and ran at that point, pausing only to snap a couple of quick shots before he fled.
Jane headed into the kitchen and poured herself a tall gla.s.s of Chardonnay. The chilled white wine was a welcome respite from a stressful day. She stood holding the fridge door open with one hand and allowing the cold air to bathe her body, easing the heat of the summer's day.
She closed the door slowly and with some regret as the bottle stayed on the shelf inside. One gla.s.s was all she would allow herself for now. She gripped the crystal gla.s.s tightly and resisted the urge to drop it in shock as Marion Ramsey stood in front of her. Her face was twisted into a demented silent scream from a black hole where her mouth should have been. She took a deep breath and calmed her racing heart as the old instincts warmed up again. It may have been 8 years since she had been an active psychic, but the muscle memories were strong and this was not the first p.i.s.sed off dead woman she had seen. The only surprise here was that she hadn't actually witnessed the woman's death firsthand.
She now had four spirits in tow, all of them falling at the hands of the new Crucifier and, according to Danny, the police didn't have a clue who he was, but, more importantly, neither did she. She had been a witness to the deaths of three of them through the eyes of the killer, a man who was able to control what she saw and felt but able to s.h.i.+eld his own ident.i.ty from her. Despite not seeing the death of Marion Ramsey, she knew that it was the same killer as the woman wore the crucifix inside of a pentagram symbol. Just how the killer was able to be in total command of her visions was a mystery, but it was one that she had to solve.
She closed the fridge door and was relieved to see that Marion had faded away along with the interior light. She had discovered long ago that the dead held no anonymity. She knew Marion's name and all about her sad life; in fact, the only thing that she didn't know was who'd killed her.
Jane had sat for hours inside of her sanctuary, replaying the visions over and over again, looking for any clue that would help lead her to the killer, only to come up frustratingly empty.
The phone on the counter rang and she knew who it was. Her senses had been growing in strength like an athlete getting back in shape and finding form.
”Hi, Danny,” she answered. ”Missing me already?” she joked.
”Jane, I just wanted to warn you that the s.h.i.+t's about to hit the fan here,” Danny whispered, as though afraid of being overheard.
”Marion Ramsey?”
”How did you..., never mind... yeah, it's Marion Ramsey. If you know who her father is then you need to realise just how wide open this case is about to be blown, and I don't need to tell you that the wider it gets blown open the greater the risk of your name coming out. I gotta go.”
Jane stared down at the handset and then at her four companions standing behind her and watching with the impatient eyes of the dead. ”Yeah, I know,” she sighed heavily. ”I know.”
Danny was grateful that the ire of Chalmers seemed to be concentrated on him rather than his team. They had all been unceremoniously summoned to the station by the superintendant who was on the war path.
”I want this maniac caught! Not tomorrow, not next week, NOW!” Chalmers positively squeaked as his face flushed bright red.
Danny knew that there was no point interrupting his boss while in mid-flow and waited for the storm to pa.s.s overhead. DC Selleck twisted nervously in his seat as Sergeant Landing idly brushed crumbs left over from her evening meal off her top. Wilson sat calmly with the look of a man who'd experienced all of this before and worse. His face was expressionless and his eyes unblinking. Danny was glad that their admin a.s.sistant, Kim, had been spared this scene as she was a civilian employee and not a conscripted soldier.
Chalmers seemed to be in danger of blowing himself out and Danny sure hoped that was the case. He knew that Commander Barrett must be leaning hard on the Superintendant but he still couldn't bring himself to find any sympathy for the man.
”And now to top it all off, we are about to be under siege from the glare of the national media spotlight!” Chalmers exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. ”Do you know what that means? Have any of you any comprehension about the sort of storm that's about to land on my shoulders?”
”Our shoulders, Sir,” Danny couldn't help but interject. ”Meaning that we're all in this together,” he added quickly.
Chalmers stared long and hard at him, trying to figure out if he was taking the p.i.s.s or not; after a few seconds, he pa.s.sed the test. ”Of course. We are a team, after all,” Chalmers offered magnanimously.
The intercom buzzed on Kim's desk and Danny motioned for Selleck to answer it. The young DC's face paled as he listened before hanging up. ”Commander Barrett is downstairs, Sir,” he said to Chalmers. ”He's coming up with a Mr Ramsey.”
Every face in the room paled at that announcement, Chalmers' the most of all.
”Alright you guys; take off and do it quickly,” Danny said as soon as Chalmers ducked out of the room to greet his unwanted guests.
”We can wait around, Boss,” Wilson said as the others nodded in agreement. ”It's no problem.”
”I appreciate that, Bryan, but there's nothing you guys can do here tonight, other than get tarnished so take off and use the back stairs.” He held up a hand to quieten any other shows of support.
Once they had left, he wandered over to the display in the centre of the room. The large white board was covered in information but nothing that had yet yielded results. There were boxes of details from the first Crucifier case still sitting in his office that he hadn't gotten around to and he couldn't help but feel like today's answers were linked to the past.
The intercom on Kim's desk started to flash and buzz loudly; he had been summoned to learn his fate.
As he approached Chalmers' office, the sound of raised voices echoed along the long empty hallway. Danny braced himself to bear the brunt of a father's misplaced anger, but as he drew closer it became clear that the loud voice belonged to Commander Barrett and the bereaved.
He tapped gently on the door. ”Get in here, Meyers!” an angry voice greeted him.
He stepped inside and saw immediately that Barrett had sequestered Chalmers' desk and chair. The commander was basically Chalmers on steroids - ambition and bureaucracy taken to a higher plane. He was a tall man who carried himself with an air of superiority and ent.i.tlement, a career officer in the job for the pension and perks with no interest in police work. His hair was military short and gun barrel steely grey; his shoulders were broad and his figure fit and trim.
”What the h.e.l.l kind of investigation are you running here, Meyers?” Barrett demanded as soon as he entered the room.
”I can a.s.sure you, Sir, that everything is being done by the book and no stone is left unturned,” Danny answered firmly.
”Then where are my results?” Barrett demanded.
”This is not an ordinary case, Sir,” Danny said carefully, holding on to his temper. There was nothing more galling than being second guessed by a man who had never walked a beat in his life. ”99 times out of 100 when you find a body, you find 20 people who saw who did it and you find the guy still covered in the evidence of his crime. But this is the 100th case where nothing makes a whole lot of sense.”
”So what do you have?”
Danny looked over as Alfonso Ramsey spoke for the first time. The media mogul was a short, una.s.suming man somewhere in his mid to late fifties. His accent was hard to place but obviously foreign at some point despite his elocution lessons. He was a ball of dark thick hair with unruly tufts protruding from his cuffs and collar. Danny had only ever seen the man within the pages of his own carefully monitored publications. He had received multiple honours from the British establishment, including an honorary knighthood. But now he seemed a far stretch from the global striding mastodon; now he seemed like a man, like a father.
”I can a.s.sure you that we are very close to finding the man responsible, Sir Ramsey,” Chalmers bl.u.s.tered.
Danny held his tongue as Ramsey stared hard at him; he didn't say aloud that the superintendant was lying, but he also knew that he didn't have to.
”I can't begin to tell you, Sir Ramsey, that a ma.s.s media outbreak at this time would be hugely detrimental to the investigation,” Barrett said warily.
Danny watched as Ramsey seemed to mull the options over in his mind.
”I find myself placed in a somewhat disconcerting position, gentlemen,” Ramsey stated as they all listened on intently. ”My daughter is dead and her killer still walks free. I was born in a small village where what you had, you took and what you took, you held. I have built an empire with my own two hands by sticking very closely to that motto, never showing weakness and always projecting an overwhelming sense of force. I have many enemies, gentlemen, and many would love to see me fall, but I can't have that. I won't stand for it.”
Danny risked a sideways glance and saw that both Chalmers and Barrett were listening on in deference despite their surroundings and ranks.
”I remember as a small child I used to play by the sea. Every now and then the ocean would offer up a gift. Sometimes I would rise before the sun and wander the sands just in case. One morning I found a small red plastic tractor; the silly little thing only had three wheels and had been battered and twisted by the waves. I was only 6 years old at the time but I loved that toy and it was mine. One morning, one of the neighbours' children caught me playing with it and he wanted it for himself. He was a large child, much bigger than me and he bloodied my nose when he took it. That night I crept into his bedroom as his family slept. I took a rock from the garden and I battered his face until my hand was wet and sore. It wasn't the toy, gentlemen, it was because it was mine. You protect what is yours and you never let anyone take it from you.”
Danny got the strangest feeling then that the man was more concerned with the act of someone murdering what was his, than the actual loss of his daughter. It was a very clear and succinct feeling that he thought Jane would have been proud of. It made Ramsey seem like a much more dangerous man than before.
”I will give you a week, gentlemen; a week to end this and bring a killer to justice. If you do not have a suspect in custody by then I will use the full force of my empire to scorch the earth and burn every living thing alive until I find the man myself. I will make sure that there is no explosion of press coverage to muddy the waters for now, and in the meantime I have a gift for you. There is an FBI Special Agent who is currently in Amsterdam at a conference. I've arranged for him to come and take a look at the case, to offer some insight.”
”That's very kind of you, Sir Ramsey,” Barrett said immediately. ”Any a.s.sistance is gratefully received.”
”You,” Ramsey said, looking straight at Danny. ”I understand that your father caught the last killer?”
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