Death By Degrees (2 page)

“I agree. But what do you think?”

“I don’t know. Not a clue, to be honest. I guess we need to find Mr. Duncan Crawford and ask him.”

“Lincoln?”

I looked from the legs up toward the head where Dr. Heinlen was working.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got something here. Kind of concerning.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask. I shuffled along beside the grave up to where Najat was kneeling.

“What is it?”

“Look at the skull,” he said, pointing with the brush he was holding. “There wasn’t much tissue left, and when I brushed it away…”

“That appeared.”

He nodded.

An upside-down cross, carved deep into the bone in the center of the victim’s forehead. It was obvious and deliberate. Our case immediately took on a whole new meaning. There was a ritualistic element to the killing, something I had never dealt with before.

“We need to find this Duncan Crawford.”

Chapter Three

T
he excavation took a few hours, well into the heat of the afternoon. The trees offered some respite but it wasn’t enough to keep the sweat away on what was turning out to be an unseasonably warm day. The weather never seemed to cooperate when it came to excavations. Either the heat was bearing down on us and the body leading to a terrible mixture of odours, or the skies opened up unleashing a torrential downpour. Those were my experiences as of late, and sincerely I hoped for an easier time for the next one.

There was always a next one in this line of work.

Given what we had found already, I knew that this wouldn’t be the only body tied to this case. We had another serial killer on our hands, this time one with a love of the ritualistic. The upside-down cross carved into the skull was the first clue; the second was the thin white robe the victim had been dressed in.

The ‘robe’, if it could really be called that, was more like a shroud, wrapped around the torso and legs. It was made of fine, white linen; it made me think of what would have been used to wrap mummies in ancient Egypt. The decomposing flesh clung to the linens now, staining them a variety of unpleasant colours.

The linens conjured up images of piety, a righteous killer erasing the sins of the world. But the cross, it spoke against that. Unless the killer wished to mark his victims for their sins first.

I didn’t know enough about religious beliefs to have any idea what was going on. All I knew was that whichever belief system the killer was following, he wasn’t following it very well.

Kara and I stopped on the way back to the detachment for some soup and sandwiches - and coffee and tea of course - from one of the many Tim Horton’s lining the streets of London. We spent little time inside, just enough to get and eat our food, before we were back on the road once more. The station wasn’t far and there was a lot of work to be done.

With any luck some of that work would be done for us. Once we found the body and confirmed the e-mail, I had our resident computer genius start to work on tracing the source of the e-mail. Warrants were needed for IP addresses and we had homicide detectives ready to go in that regard; the original detectives on the Plimpton case were called in and were happy to help. It was their chance to settle the case and to put not only the victim’s family at ease, but their own demons to rest. These cases weren’t easy and the longer it went on, the more you felt like a failure.

The more the case haunted you.

Classical music poured out of the forensics lab, audible down the hall. The new technician, Eduard Fromm, was a bit of an odd one. Not that I didn’t like classical music, but I got a bit of an
A Clockwork Orange
vibe whenever I heard the music playing in the lab. He seemed normal enough at most times, but then he would lose himself as he rambled on about whatever technology he was using or what computer magic he was working. He had only been with us for a year, with any luck he’d calm down as he became more comfortable in the job.

I wasn’t surprised to find him staring into a computer screen; his fingers blurred as they moved across the keys. There wasn’t a cop alive who could type like that; most might as well have been typing with their elbows. The
Danse Macabre
was beginning to reach a crescendo in the background as I tapped on his shoulder.

“Oh, sh…” he said, almost knocking the keyboard off of the desk as he whirled about. “Detective, sorry. Didn’t hear you two come in.”

Kara stayed back a bit and let me do the talking.

“Music might be a little loud, Eddie, could hear it down the hall.” I had to speak loudly, or he probably never would have heard me. He turned back to the computer and turned off the music.

“Better?” he said, a smile on his face.

“Yeah, not sure how you can think with it that loud. And apparently you’re a
Buffy
fan.”

Eddie looked surprised. “How did you guess that?”

“You’re younger than I am, and most people our age know nothing about classical music outside of Beethoven or Mozart. If I hear Camille Saint-Saëns, it usually means someone’s seen
Hush
.”

Hush
was an Emmy-nominated
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
episode where everyone lost their voices. While writing out their plans on whiteboards, the
Danse Macabre
was playing in the background.

“No wonder you’re a detective. Must mean you’re a fan as well.”

“Of anything Joss Whedon puts out. Back to it, though. Please tell me you have something.”

He nodded and turned back to the computer. “He didn’t try to hide where it was coming from, that’s for sure. IP traced right back to his home.” He looked at the document. “Bell is the provider.”

And?

“Not important, right. Okay so I got records that show recent e-mails and that. Here’s the thing, and this is pretty big, so if you want to sit down or something, maybe you should do that. I don’t have another chair nearby though, umm, want me to get you one?”

And the weirdness commenced. He rambled when he was nervous, and it didn’t take much to get him in that state. And he had a tendency to stare. I knew Kara found him a little unnerving so I wasn’t surprised when she found an empty desk to sit at on the other side of the lab.

He definitely stood out in the detachment. He was younger than even the greenest constables and his scruffy appearance didn’t mesh with the clean shaven, brush cut wearing majority. His nearly black hair reached almost to his shoulders and his facial hair consisted of a lot of scruff – at least a few weeks of growth. He looked a bit like he could audition for an eighties rock band. But he dressed well and maintained himself, even if he did look far more relaxed than everyone else.

“Just tell me what you found, Eddie. Please.”

“Okay, so that e-mail was sent at precisely eight in the morning, Winnipeg time. You got it at nine our time, then, right? Winnipeg is an hour behind, so….”

“Eddie,” I said, staring at him. “Focus. What are you getting at?” The kid, who couldn’t have been more than in his early twenties, was brilliant. A genius. They say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity; in his case it was more eccentricity.

“Sixty-four.”

“Sixty-four what?”

“He had an e-mail scheduler plug-in or something, and at the same time, sixty-four e-mails were sent out. We’ll need warrants on the internet service providers, but that may be difficult. I’ve been running ‘whois’ searches on them… a lot are international.”

“Where international?”

“So far Australia, Austria, China, England, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, South Africa, the States, and Uruguay. Three in the States, two here, two in Australia and England. And I still have more IP addresses to check.”

The IP (internet protocol) addresses he needed to check were those of the recipients computers. It would take a lot more work to be able to narrow down the exact recipient. I’d served cross-border production orders (more or less a warrant that required a company to produce documents regarding a client account or similar) on American internet providers before, but never outside of North America.

This was not going to be easy.

I noticed something else, but didn’t want to bring it up. Eddie was sensitive at times about his eccentricities, and providing all of the countries in alphabetical order, followed by the number of killings per country in a descending list were definitely part of his… uniqueness.

“So sixty-four e-mails, all sent at the same time, to places all over the world? Are we to assume that there’s a body for each one?”

Eddie shrugged. He was actually silent for once.

“That would make him one of the most prolific serial killers in history. And international? Shit.”

“What, detective?”

“It’s bad enough dealing with jurisdiction lines within Ontario. Is there any way you can find out what these e-mails said, or who they were sent to?”

“Legally?”

I just stared at him. “It’s a homicide investigation, Eddie. We need to do this by the books.”

“It’s going to take a while. I mean, we’ll need to verify the provider for all of the IP addresses, find out the country it’s in, work it out with whatever agency is there, get them to get us a copy of the e-mail, and if there’s GPS coordinates we’d have to check those, too. Unless they did, I’d figure they would…”

My phone started to ring, a welcome interruption.

“Munroe,” I said.

“Detective Lincoln Munroe. A pleasure.”

It had come in from a blocked number, and I didn’t recognize the voice. But this number wasn’t made public. It was for police use only.

“Who is this?”

“You already know, Lincoln.”

I couldn’t believe it. But there was no other answer coming to mind.

“Duncan Crawford,” I said, using every ounce of strength to hide the confusion and fear in my voice.

Chapter Four

“P
recisely,” he said. The way he spoke sent shivers down my spine. Was it his voice? Or just that I knew what this man had done?

“How did you get this number?”

He laughed. I wished that I could show the same level of calmness he was displaying. “Is that really the most important question right now?”

He was right. There were far bigger things to be worrying about.

“The e-mails,” I said. “All sixty-four of them. Is there a body associated to each?”

“Yes.”

I knew better than that. Closed questions got yes or no answers.

“Where did you send them to?”

“All over the world, Lincoln. But you already know that. You want specifics. Would you like me to forward them all to you?”

I couldn’t even begin to understand what was going on. I just had to go with it. And I had to appear as relaxed as he did.

“Please. Why are you doing this now, after so long?”

“Boredom. And as a test. I’ve been at this for years with no one ever so much as making me a person-of-interest. I’ve never been spoken to by the police, never even suspected as far as I know.”

“A test?”

“That is something for another day. I’ll forward you those e-mails, Lincoln. And I have time for one more question.”

“Why?”

“Because I had no other choice. Goodbye, Lincoln. We’ll talk again soon.”

My jaw hung low and my eyes remained open wide long after the call had ended.

“What in the fuck was that?”

“It was him,” I said. Kara was staring at me; I could see in her eyes she was trying to process what had just happened. I hadn’t even begun to process it.

“I gathered that, Lincoln. But what the… there really are sixty-four bodies?”

“Sounds like it. He didn’t sound like he was lying. He didn’t really sound like anything at all. Just… normal. And calm, like he’d made that call a thousand times. He said he’d forward all the e-mails to me.”

“But that many?”

“I know. It’s a lot, but it still falls far short of the record. Only about a quarter of the way, actually?”

Kara looked surprised. The most famous serial killers in history were by no means the most prolific. Not when there were a large number who had exceeded a hundred kills.

I went into my e-mail and refreshed. There they were, sixty new e-mails all sent to me by Duncan Crawford. I opened them one by one and they were all the same: form letters, with only the victim’s name and coordinates changed from e-mail to e-mail.

That wasn’t the only difference though. None of the other e-mails were addressed to anyone, they all were addressed “To whom it may concern,” whereas mine, it was sent to my attention.

“They’re there?”

“Yeah,” I said, my eyes meeting Kara’s. “They are.” She looked as concerned as I imagined I did. The usual brightness in her eyes was gone, all that remained was a glassiness that covered the emerald green.

“I need to call Kat. I don’t think we’ll be going home anytime soon.”

The look on Kara’s face, the slumped shoulders, it felt like I was looking in a mirror. Sleep was going to be a rarity for some time.

The moment I grasped the scope of the case, the moment everything had finally sunk in, I put the call in to Headquarters. This was going to be a bureaucratic nightmare as every police force in every city, province, state, country and continent tried to catch the killer, and we were going to need all the help we could get. The approval for more manpower came in and with that, the calls went out. An hour later we had four more detectives in the office, all of them at my beck and call.

The first step was for someone to find me a world map. The stores were closed and I couldn’t think of anywhere in the detachment where we might find one. Then someone remembered that the Superintendent had one in his office. I gave the order to commandeer the map and prepared to take the flack if need be.

I had printed out several copies of each of the e-mails. One detective was going through the e-mails and putting a push pin into the map at the coordinates of each suspected burial site. The other three were contacting the agencies that had received the e-mails in order to try and confirm whether or not a body had been found. They had to contend with language barriers and jurisdictional issues with every phone call, but with each call we came one step closer. Most of the agencies had investigated and already found the bodies. Some had dismissed the e-mails as pranks, something I couldn’t comprehend, and in other cases the bodies had been found previously, and they were now trying to confirm that the locations they had been found in matched those listed in the e-mails.

The more calls they made, the more it became clear: this was not a hoax; it was the real deal. We had a serial killer of unprecedented prowess on our hands, and one who had changed the game by calling me directly. He was an adversary to be feared, that much I knew, and I couldn’t help but think I’d met my Moriarty.

I never made it home that night. Instead I found myself catching a red eye to Vancouver, the largest city in British Columbia. Despite the high cost of living, Vancouver always ranked high in lists of the best places to live whether it was for Canada or the world. It was a coastal seaport and given the temperate climate of the west coast, you could go kayaking in the Pacific Ocean and skiing in the mountains on the same day. Of course it rains a lot.

As much as the proximity to the Rocky Mountains and ocean appealed to me, the idea of living in the most densely populated city in Canada didn’t. I would have been more inclined to catch the ferry over to Vancouver Island, find a nice place in the province’s capital of Victoria, or head north from Vancouver to Squamish, a small town less than an hour away.

Business was bringing us to Squamish today, not pleasure. Once we had landed we rented a car and made our way to Highway 99, also known as the Sea-to-Sky Highway, that went from the ocean in Vancouver into the mountains and through Squamish, Whistler and other stops along the way. We came unarmed and in little more than a civilian capacity. Our jurisdiction lay in Ontario, a couple of thousand kilometres away.

We were here to observe and report, and by the time we made it into Squamish, the sun was starting to make its way across the sky. Luck had been with us and the RCMP in the area didn’t have an archaeologist or anthropologist able to assist in the excavation yesterday when the e-mail had come in. They located the body, cordoned the area off and placed it under guard until the expert could arrive: a forensic anthropologist from UBC – the University of British Columbia – in Vancouver.

It wasn’t hard to find the site, and it wasn’t hard for everyone else to either. The body had been buried just off of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, near where it intersected with the Mamquam River Forest Service Road. When we arrived to a horde of onlookers and news reporters, I stood in awe, mouth agape, at the scenery. To the south and just across the highway was Stawamus Chief, a mountain that looked like someone had taken a massive piece of granite and dumped it at the side of the road - a piece of granite over two-thousand feet tall.

The sides of the Chief were cliffs, they looked nearly vertical from where I was standing, and it’s deep grey colour split with the greens of trees scattered along it gave it an ominous appearance as it loomed over us.

Kara and I flashed our badges to one of the officers holding down the ‘entrance’ to the crime scene. It wasn’t so much an entrance as it was the only break in the crime scene tape. He didn’t flinch at the sight of an OPP badge; obviously he had been briefed that we would be coming. The news media hadn’t though, and some reporter with a very powerful telephoto lens on her camera must have seen the badge.

The woman, tall, blonde and leggy in a skirt far shorter than I’d expect to see on someone her age, came running over to us, navigating the uneven terrain at the side of the highway like it was nothing - despite her three-inch heels.

“Detectives,” she yelled, her voice carrying over the traffic roaring past. “I’m with the Squamish Chief newspaper.”

I wanted to ignore her and just keep walking, but then she would just shout after us. She had almost closed the gap by that point anyway.

“Why are two OPP officers here in Squamish on an RCMP case?”

“Ma’am,” I said. “You know I can’t answer that. The investigation is clearly ongoing, and any question you ask I’m going to have to answer with ‘no comment’ or ‘it’s still under investigation’. Once the investigation reaches a point where information can be released, it will be. You’ll just have to be patient.”

“But, can you…”

“No comment. It’s still under investigation.”

She scowled at me and I was glad she was facing away from the mountain. It was a scowl that could have melted stone and brought the entirety of the Stawamus Chief down upon us. I’d never had much patience with reporters, and with my past now plastered on the front page of newspapers everywhere whatever patience I did have was gone. They had a job to do, I understood that, but it wasn’t a job I felt like helping with.

Not at that moment, anyway.

The body was less than fifty feet from the road, buried in a shallow grave just as the body of Jennifer Plimpton has been. This grave belonged to Abigail Baker, a missing Squamish Nation woman who had lived on a nearby reserve. Baker had gone missing sixteen months ago while walking home to the Stawamus reserve only a mile or so from downtown Squamish. Baker was an indigenous person, a member of the Squamish people, and one of nearly four thousand registered band members. Baker, only nineteen when she went missing, worked in the downtown area as a server. She’d left the restaurant around midnight and never made it home.

And now we knew why.

The anthropologist had arrived only fifteen minutes before we did, and as such the excavation hadn’t begun. I wasn’t there to assist on that, I was there to determine if there really was a connection between the bodies. It seemed obvious, but assuming anything was dangerous - even if the killer had already told me they were connected. There was also the matter of beginning the process of interdepartmental cooperation.

There were three people looking over the gravesite when we walked up: two in business attire and one in Bermuda shorts and a golf shirt. I went for the oldest one of the two well-dressed people. She looked up as we walked toward her, then stood up once she realized who we were.

“Detective Lincoln Munroe, OPP,” I said, taking the last two steps and holding out my hand. She shook it gently, her grip loose.

“And you must be Kara Jameson. We were told you two would be coming. I’m Gail Kelly, Sergeant with the RCMP here in Squamish. How was your flight?”

“Not sure, I slept through most of it.”

“Snored through most of it,” Kara said.

“You slept just fine,” I said. “At least you did once they brought you those ear plugs.”

Gail was laughing. “So it was a good flight then, perfect. You know, it’s a wonder we’ve never had anyone kill their partner, what with the amount of time we spend putting up with each other. Right, Mori?”

“Sure thing, Sarge. Whatever you say.”

“You’ve trained him well,” I said.

“We’re getting there. Daniel Morimoto, or ‘Mori’, if you prefer. He won’t mind. Right, Mori?”

“Right, Sarge.”

Mori stood up and came over to us. We shook hands and finished the last round of introductions.

“So, this is just the tip of the iceberg, eh?”

“Seems that way, Mori.” I looked back at the reporters, all standing behind the crime scene tape with their expensive cameras and giant boom mikes. “We can’t say much here on that though, too many people listening in.”

He nodded, remembering the range on some the equipment. I walked over to the gravesite and introduced myself to the anthropologist, Dr. Ahmed.

“Does it fit the timeline?”

He was carefully brushing dirt away from the skull as he spoke, looking intently at the bones. “Yes, based on skeletonization, it fits the time line.”

Not much of a talker.

His brush moved across the jaw, sweeping dirt out of what used to be the mouth and off of the teeth. The forehead was still covered in a layer of dirt.

“Can you brush off the forehead, please, Dr. Ahmed? Need to confirm something.”

“The
frontal bone
. Yes, I can.”

Sorry, I guess it’s only a forehead while you’re alive. I wanted Dr. Heinlen here.

It only took a few passes of the brush before I could see what I was looking for: an upside-down cross in the centre of the victim’s fore…
frontal bone
.