The Christmas Killer
Read The Christmas Killer Online
Authors: Jim Gallows
1: Monday, 12 December, just after midnight
9: Tuesday, 13 December, 12.10 a.m.
19: Wednesday, 14 December, 8.30 a.m.
35: Thursday, 15 December, 8 a.m.
39: Friday, 16 December, 9 a.m.
41: Saturday, 17 December, 11.25 a.m.
43: Sunday, 18 December, 7.30 p.m.
45: Monday, 19 December, 7 a.m.
60: Tuesday, 20 December, 8.15 a.m.
64: Wednesday, 21 December, 9 a.m.
69: Thursday, 22 December, 8 a.m.
73: Friday, 23 December, 11.30 a.m.
76: Saturday, 24 December, 5.49 a.m.
With special thanks to Anthony Galvin
Monday, 12 December, just after midnight
He walked down the street. His soft shoes barely made a sound on the sidewalk. His breath condensed on the cold air in front of him – for just a moment, and then it would fade away. Like he was never there. It had been a while since he had heard the chimes of the old bell tower strike midnight. It was close to freezing already, and snowflakes were falling lazily, which meant he would have to be cautious about where he stepped.
He bet it looked and felt ‘Christmassy’ to most people. But he could make his peace with it tonight. Because it was so Christmassy, no one would be outside. They would all be in their homes, beneath their garish decorations and the trashy lights he could see flickering behind some of the windows on the street. They were probably online shopping for toys and video games that would further soften the brains of their doubtless slow-witted children.
But tonight that was a very good thing, as far as he was concerned. It made his work easier …
Would you mind if it’s
too
easy?
A line from Hamlet came back to him.
‘Now could I drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on’ …
If I wasn’t so damned tired and chilled to the bone.
There she was, walking towards the end of the street. He would need to speed up, but only a little. He didn’t want to run. Pounding footsteps and panting breath would only spook her. He wanted her to be scared … but not yet.
He could see her clearly now, wrapped firmly in her thin coat as she hurried towards the house. She was shouting into a mobile phone.
‘You should have picked up Kelly ages ago,’ he heard her say. ‘Instead you’re fucking around with your asshole friends. If I can’t rely on you, then what’s the fucking point?’ There was more, but he tuned it out.
He was almost feeling sorry for her. What was the life of a single mother in this bleak neighbourhood? It must be tough, juggling work, a home and a young child with no support. Mostly he felt sorry for Kelly, a sweet little thing with a shy smile and big brown eyes, sleeping at the babysitter’s place until someone picked her up.
How will she cope without a mother? Will every Christmas after this one be tinged with sadness, bitterness – heartache – at the memory of what happened the night her mother died?
He scanned the surrounding street. A narrow alley ran down the side of the house. That would be ideal. He would have to intercept her before she got there.
Timing would be everything. Already she was fumbling in her purse for a key, the phone clutched between her shoulder and her ear, still giving it good to the poor sap at the other end.
She had not even noticed him.
He smiled.
She’ll notice me soon enough.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, tapping her on the shoulder.
She turned and squinted into the darkness. Her eyes were uncertain, alert. Then a faint frown crossed her dark features as she tried to place him.
Hissing into the phone she said, ‘I’ll call you back.’ Then she turned to him.
He needed to get her off the street and into the alley.
‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘My glasses … I dropped them in the snow. Could you help me … please?’
And then he was backing away slowly, into the alley that ran down the side of her small house. His nerves were tingling. If she followed now, the rest would flow with an easy inevitability. But if she hesitated …
‘Oh, yeah. Sure.’
In his pocket, his grip tightened around the long black woollen sock filled with nearly a pound of nickels and dimes. Enough to knock over a horse.
They were always so cumbersome when they were unconscious, limp and heavy – uncooperative. But once he got her inside, things would get much easier.
He felt triumphant as she drew alongside him. She
was close enough for him to smell her perfume on a wave of body heat and end-of-day sweat.
He closed his eyes. ‘You’ve asked for this.’
And then he swung.
Monday, 10 a.m.
Jake Austin plunged his hands deep into his trouser pockets. It was cold and the wind found its way easily through his coat and shirt. What should have been an easy morning policing a small protest was turning into a colossal pain in the ass.
He looked at the angry crowd in front of him. Half the reason he had left Chicago was for a quiet life, but now Littleton, Indiana was beginning to look like the LA riots. The group was only about sixty strong, but they were hot. And there was one man among them fanning the flames.
‘You’re pulling down our church,’ the guy shouted. He was in his late thirties, with a scraggly dark beard and rumpled checked shirt open at the collar. Jake didn’t need to see the notepad sticking out of his back pocket to make him for a hack – probably one of the local guys trying to raise his profile by turning this into a bigger story than it actually was. ‘It’s an insult to God – at Christmas, of all times!’
The crowd roared agreement, their roar falling to jeers and boos as Councilman Mitch Harper took to
the makeshift wooden platform which had been erected just to the left of the church’s nativity scene, which was a sad reflection of the building itself – old and bland, in serious disrepair. The Virgin’s clothes were moth-eaten, and the cow that stooped over the manger was missing an ear. Jake watched Harper step as respectfully as he could over one of the two wise men, wondering if an APB had ever been put out on the third.
At over six foot, Harper looked impressive in his dark power suit, crisp white shirt and red tie, and did a good job of pretending he wasn’t feeling the bitter cold – every inch the unflappable civil servant. But as he spoke into the microphone his pinched face and tight voice betrayed the fact that he was riled by the heckling. Jake could make out ‘… progress … and … infrastructure …’ but that was about it.
Jake looked over at his partner, Detective Howard Mills, who just shrugged his thin shoulders and yawned. That was Mills all over; you’d need to put a match to his trousers just to get him to stand up. An OK guy, but he had about as much drive and ambition as a dung beetle.
Jake shrugged back. He hadn’t been in Littleton long, but he knew that Harper would say whatever was needed to get the votes. Today, it wasn’t working so well.
‘We have to look to the future—’
‘You’re destroying the heart of this community for another interstate!’ the journalist yelled.
Harper addressed his response to the crowd. ‘We are
the only major route out of the capital not serviced by a proper road. The sea of progress is raging, and Littleton is being swept away.’
‘Sweep this away!’ a voice shouted, and a paper coffee cup exploded on the councilman’s chest, the top popping off and hot coffee splattering his shirt and tie. He flinched, and first pain then anger flared in his eyes, but he quickly brought it under control, like steel shutters coming down.
The unflappable civil servant.
‘I am as sorry as you are …’
Next came a Coke can, which Harper swatted, stumbling back a little as he did.
Jake rushed up the steps of the wooden platform, feeling his shin make contact with the Virgin Mary and hearing the dull thump of Baby Jesus landing in the snow. He threw a protective arm around Harper, who was still trying to talk into the mic. Mills came forward also. Between them they used their backs to shield Harper from the mob’s missiles. They guided the councilman over to the side of the church, where silent earth movers stood behind wire fencing.
‘Thank you, Officers,’ Harper muttered, brushing furiously at the stain on his shirt. His hand was white and trembled slightly.
‘Are you OK?’ Jake asked, but then his mobile rang. Bad timing, but as a cop he couldn’t ignore it. He took it out of his jacket pocket, glanced at the display –
Leigh
– and sighed.
He put the phone away. The protesters were beginning to press forward against the wire, shouting abuse at the construction workers. That was all Jake needed. More trouble.
Suddenly a voice rang out over the protesters: ‘Friends, please!’
There was a momentary lull as the people turned back to see who was speaking. A man in black walked briskly to the platform. He stood behind the microphone and tried to take it from its stand but it wouldn’t come loose so he stretched his neck upwards.
‘Friends,’ the man said again. ‘I am as upset as you are.’
Jake looked quizzically at Mills.
‘Father Ken Laurie,’ Mills whispered. ‘The parish priest.’
The priest, who looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, struggled with the microphone, finally gripping the stand with his left hand and angling it down towards his face.
‘We’re all going to miss this church, and it’s especially sad to have to say goodbye to it at this time of year. This is my twenty-second Christmas as your priest. I baptized many of your children. I presided over your daughters’ weddings.’ The crowd quietened to listen to him speak. ‘But the church isn’t a building. The church is in our hearts.’
There was a hum from the crowd.
‘The diocese has agreed to Christ the Redeemer
being relocated, as a new road will breathe life back into this community.’
‘What about the graves that will be buried under four lanes of concrete?’
The people jeered again and Father Ken held up his hand. ‘Our loved ones’ remains will be moved to the new cemetery with all the proper respect—’
‘What about resting in peace, Father?’ The hack addressed the priest, but his eyes were on the gathered protesters. ‘Don’t you give a shit about that?’
The crowd yelled angry agreement. This was getting out of hand. Jake stepped round the wire fence and pushed through the throng, opening his jacket and flashing his badge to make people move aside. Once he got to the middle where the journalist was standing he could see the man’s accreditation: Chuck Ford.
‘Why don’t you cool it on the questions, Chuck?’ he whispered. ‘You’re making a tricky situation into a volatile one.’
Ford just grinned back at him. He looked around at the protesters, even though his words were for Jake, the same trick he’d pulled to turn the crowd against Father Ken.
‘Ever hear of freedom of the press? Why don’t you want us to ask questions? Why the cover-up?’
Jake knew the type. He had seen it often. Big shows of anger delivered in a relaxed but challenging pose, the pose of someone who knew that he could say what he
wanted without getting punched in the face. Probably bullied at school, now using his job to feel like a big man. Everyone with status was a substitute for those who had slapped him around.
‘Cover-up!’ One voice rose over the others. Jake quickly scanned the protesters and found the source near the front, shaking his fist up at the priest. He was a big man with wide shoulders, somewhere in his fifties. His eyes were dull but fixed. He was wearing blue jeans and a lumberjack shirt, open, with a black T-shirt underneath. The letters of the Metallica logo emblazoned on the chest were contorted by the man’s broad but flabby chest. His red bobble hat barely made it around his cranium.
‘Cover-up! Cover-up! Cover-up!’ The crowd was taking up the chant. The lumberjack threw his cigarette at the platform, the butt hitting the priest on the leg.
Take out the bull-moose loony, the rest will fold.
Jake pushed through the crowd again towards the loudmouth. This time people weren’t making way for him. Then his phone bleeped. Text message. He ignored it.
Twenty or so uniformed cops were coming in from the sides. They were trying to make a line between the inflamed protesters and the construction workers.
‘Called for reinforcements, pig?’ snarled the lumberjack. ‘Big brave men when you have backup, right?’
‘I need you to calm down, sir!’ said Jake.
‘Fuck you.’
‘Calm down,’ said Jake, ‘or I
will
take you into custody.’
The man drew his fist way back – a haymaker. Jake stepped into the punch, bringing himself chest to chest with his attacker, and the wild swing sailed over his left shoulder. Jake gripped the lumberjack’s shirt, then he spun sharply, bending his knees and throwing his hips back into the big man, who was bent at the waist and thus easier to flip. Jake pulled up sharply to make sure that the man didn’t suffer any broken bones upon impact. Internal Affairs were still a little bit touchy about broken bones.
The two wise men were not so lucky.
As soon as the man landed Jake turned him on to his stomach and pinned his arm behind his back. He brought both arms together and cuffed them.
A few in the crowd backed away. One of the uniforms winked at him and muttered, ‘Touchdown!’
Mills was grinning. Just as Jake was hauling the man to his feet, knocking aside the severed torso of Melchior, Caspar or Balthazar, Mills’s phone began to ring.
‘If it’s my wife, tell her I’ll call her back,’ Jake said with a smile.
Mills answered his mobile, stiffened, listened for a few more moments, then put away the phone.
‘You better hand this guy over to the uniforms, Jake,’ said Mills, his expression more serious than Jake had ever seen. ‘They’ve found a body.’
