Death By Degrees (10 page)

“No, his wife hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days. The day he was last seen, he’d been fired for poor performance. The investigators, his coworkers, even his wife believed he’d killed himself. Losing his job, especially at his age, it would have been a huge hit to his sense of honour.”

“The suicide rate is pretty high here, isn’t it?”

“It is. I think we push people too hard, in school and in work. Losing your job or failing out of school shouldn’t be seen as the absolute end of the world. I think it’s improving though, but it’s hard. We really don’t see failure as an option.”

“I kind of wish we were more like that. A little more hard-working than we are.”

“Pros and cons, just like with everything else.”

“Too true.”

“Hidenori actually lived close to here so these woods were checked when he went missing. People come into the woods here to hang themselves. I guess we should’ve been looking to the ground and not the trees.”

“What if he came in here to kill himself and stumbled upon Crawford burying Megumi?”

“Hmmm, you might be on to something,” Arata said.

Najat and I continued brushing the dirt away revealing the skull first. The telltale cross was there once more, but this time it wasn’t alone. A deep crack ran along the top of the skull and down the right side. It must have been a few inches in length.

“I think my theory might be right,” I said. Arata came over and looked down at the skull.

“That definitely looks fatal. Cause of death, perhaps?”

“Seems that way,” I said. “I wonder if there will be any more injuries.”

“What was the cause of death on the others?”

“So far we know one for certain and it was a stab wound to the abdomen. That body still had enough tissue left for us to determine the cause of death. We just excavated a body in Finland though that had what looks to be a blade mark on one of the lumbar vertebra. Fits with a stab to the abdomen.”

“So this doesn’t fit then?”

“Not at all. There hasn’t been any evidence of blunt force trauma.”

“Then Hidenori interrupting Crawford makes a lot of sense. Crawford would’ve needed to have a shovel with him.”

I nodded, knowing what he was getting at. “A shovel definitely could have cracked the skull like that.”

We dug deeper, revealing more of the remains a little at a time. The shroud was there again, linens wrapped around the body. The arms were positioned along the sides with the linen wrapped around the arms and torso together. With the other victims, the arms had been left free. I pulled back the linen as much as I could and noticed straight away that the right arm had been violently broken. Both the radius and ulna were in pieces. Bone fragments lay upon the linen.

“He tried to defend himself. Must have caught Crawford while he was burying Megumi. Crawford attacked and Hidenori put his arm up to block it; looks like the blow was powerful enough to pretty much shatter his bones. Unless we find more injuries, and I doubt we will, the second strike was the killing blow.”

“You think it was just two hits?”

“The amount of force required to break the bone like that, I’d say it would’ve taken an overhead swing coming down on the arm from above. If he’d hit him that hard, Hidenori probably would have been in too much pain to defend a second time.”

Arata leaned over the grave and looked at what remained of the arm bones. “Yeah, that does look like it would’ve taken a very violent swing. So this one wasn’t planned then?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Crawford would not have been happy about that. He was too used to having things always go his way.”

“How many people has he killed, Lincoln? Sixty-something?”

“Sixty-five counting Hidenori. At least that’s how many were identified in the e-mails. What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know. If he’s going for a certain number, do you think he would count this as one or two?”

I had to think about it for a minute. Did he have a goal in mind where he would stop, or was he just killing until he got caught? My mind wandered back to my first serial killer case only two years ago. Saunders never seemed to count his crimes, but he was definitely affected when he unknowingly murdered a pregnant woman. It had caused him to attack again quickly, much faster than he had before, in order to restore balance to his life and “work”.

“Eddie, are you able to access your program from here?”

“Of course,” he said. He took his backpack off and unzipped it, taking his netbook out. “What did you want to know?”

“How long was it before the next killing compared to the average time?”

“After this one? Let me see.” He was holding the computer in his left hand and typing with his right. Even one-handed he typed faster than I could. It only took him a couple of minutes to get the information, and most of that was probably waiting for the program to load. “Fifteen days. Pretty average.”

“So this didn’t change his plan at all. It’s almost like this didn’t even affect him.”

“He was protecting himself to a degree,” Arata said. “He probably used that to justify his killing of Hidenori. Even though it wasn’t part of the plan, it became part of it.”

“Even though he’s clearly nuts, he seems rational in his thoughts. I guess he was able to rationalize this killing and move on without any ill effects to his psyche.”

“Kind of frightening,” Arata said.

“I’ve always believed that there is nothing more dangerous than a purely rational mind. I mean, it takes much more than just rational thought, but if you can, sometimes in an instant, justify a course of action to yourself as being the only logical course to take…”

“And they’re always harder to catch.”

“Yeah, they’re smarter. They don’t panic and they plan before, during and after – even if it is a spur of the moment thing. It’s like the mind never stops planning. But a rational serial killer? I don’t think they exist. Sooner or later, they crack. Sometimes they did before they even started. Sure they may have rational moments, plans and everything, but can they hold it together?”

“That’s where you’re at with Crawford, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Arata was quite intuitive. It didn’t seem like he was anticipating my answers, it was that he already knew the answer. He was going to make a hell of a detective one day.

“They aren’t too in to this,” I said to Arata, gesturing casually toward the two detectives.

“They’ll follow up on it after. I think they’re worried about not speaking English. They probably know enough to get by, they just don’t want to be wrong. Part of the culture.”

“I hear that fully. We’ve traveled a bit with this case and everywhere we go I’m terrified of working with someone where they don’t speak English and I don’t speak their language. We need Babel Fish.”

Arata laughed. I wasn’t sure he was going to get it. References to Douglas Adams’s classic
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
were usually lost on a lot of people. The Babel Fish was a small yellow fish that was put into a person’s ear and allowed the person to instantly understand anything said in any language. It also later became the name of an online translator.

“They would make things easier, although weren’t they also responsible for a number of bloody wars throughout history?”

“They were. Nice to meet another fan.”

“Likewise.”

More officers arrived as we finished the dig and the coroner, just as sweaty as we all were, was back for his second trip. He had to be into his sixties and was very thin, although he seemed to be in good shape. Still, I had to think that the humidity and terrain had to be wearing him down. The rest of us were decades younger and we were hurting.

The dig seemed to slow toward the end and I wondered if part of it was due to trying to prolong the inevitable. The longer we took, the more time we had before we had to hike back down the mountain.   It didn’t seem to matter that it was getting to be late in the afternoon. The heat and humidity hung on, refusing to die. It felt like every step involved walking through a wall of thick, wet air.

“Is it always like this?” I said, pulling my tie back and forth to loosen it.

“In the summer… yeah. Pretty much. It’ll stay like this for a while then we’ll get a typhoon and a month’s worth of wind and rain in a day. Then a day later it’ll be like this again.”

“And I thought Ontario was bad.”

“It’s bad too. Personally, Vancouver was the most comfortable place I’ve lived. Never too hot, never too humid.”

“Ever think of going back?”

“Nah, all of my family is here. What about you, ever thought of relocating?”

“We’ve spent a bit of time in Warsaw where my wife’s family lives, but not a ton. INTERPOL is putting my family up in France while this investigation is ongoing. I’d consider moving though. I have no other family and all of my wife’s family is in Poland.”

Arata nodded. “It sounds like there isn’t much to hold you in one place then.”

“Not much… jobs and school for the kids. But they love Poland, so who knows… maybe one day.”

“I figure we’ll just try to travel as much as we can. It’s not cheap though, especially for us to go outside of Asia. But it’s always worth it.”

We talked as we worked. Eddie and Najat talked as they worked, Najat examining the bones and Eddie, sitting on a rock just a few feet from the grave, typing away on his computer. And the other detectives, they talked as they smoked a little ways away from us. It helped to pass the time and before we knew it, it was time to make the hot, sticky, and lengthy journey back downhill.

It seemed longer this time, much longer, as we dragged our already drained bodies down the slope. Going up was difficult, but going down while tired was worse in my opinion. It was a matter of constantly fighting against gravity, an evil force which seemed to want me to topple forward and roll to the bottom.

Although that would have made for a faster route.

It was getting dark by the time we made it back to the detachment. Najat had done her examinations of the bones at the sites and didn’t need to go to the hospital for anything further. The coroner had been asked to send us all of his information so that we could try to determine for certain if a shovel could have caused the injuries we observed. It had to be, as far as I was concerned. Nothing else made sense in terms of a readily accessible weapon that Crawford would have had with him.

I prepared to say my goodbyes to Arata and the detectives and to thank them for their time only to find that we were now heading out for food and drinks.

“It’s customary,” Arata said. “After a day of work, you often have to go drinking with your boss.”

“Have to?”

“If you want to keep working.” Arata followed it with a half-hearted laugh. So he was only partially joking.

“Well then, I guess I can’t refuse. Where are we heading to?”

“There’s a karaoke place right by the station, it’s the favourite amongst the detectives. Not much else we can do tonight anyway.”

The next thing I knew I was sitting in a small room eating sushi and drinking sake while Watanabe
-san
and Satō
-san
belted out Michael Jackson songs. The accents made the songs and I couldn’t believe that the quiet, reserved detectives were letting loose so quickly.

When it came to my turn I went for some Elvis, a little
Blue Suede Shoes
to start, followed by the absolute must sing at any karaoke party: Queen’s
Bohemian Rhapsody
. The room was set up with four wireless microphones and before I really knew what was happening Eddie and Najat had paired up on one, Arata had his own, and the detectives had also paired up. Every note was hit off key or out of time but it didn’t matter. And with a little more sake and a couple of beers down, we didn’t care so much.

The pinnacle of the night came when Watanabe
-san
and Satō
-san
convinced
Eddie, Najat and I to try out a Japanese pop song. The lyrics were in Japanese, of course, but written with English letters so it gave us a slight chance to pull the song off. Judging by their laughter, however, we failed miserably.

We carried on past midnight before calling it quits. Arata and the detectives went their way and we stumbled toward the Station Hotel. I unlocked the door to my room, locked it behind me and flopped onto the bed, ready to sleep.

My phone rang.

“Honestly, Crawford?”

“It couldn’t be all fun and games tonight, Lincoln. You have to do a little work.”

“I’ve been working all day cleaning up your mess, so don’t try to lecture me.” I tried hard to keep my words clear, my thoughts sober. It wasn’t easy.

“I see you found both Megumi and Hidenori. A shame about Hidenori, but he left me no choice. He was planning to die that night anyway, just not at someone else’s hand.”

“Wasn’t part of the plan, was he?”

“No, unfortunately, he wasn’t. That was the only time I’ve been worried that I might be caught. But, in the end, it changed nothing. His death was a necessity.”

“Cold way of looking at it, Crawford.”

He laughed. “You forgot that you are talking to a quote-unquote serial killer.”

“No quotes needed, that’s what you are.”

He paused for a moment. “I guess you’re right, Lincoln. By all definitions I am a serial killer. However, the reasons behind my actions are entirely noble.”

“That’s something you’ll have to explain. I can’t wrap my head around how killing random people is noble.”

“None of them were random. And are you sure you want to discuss this now? Will you even remember it in the morning?”

It was my turn to laugh. “I’m quite fine, thank you. So what noble cause are you killing for? World peace, an end to hunger, perfect happiness for everyone on Earth?”

“Precisely.”

I stopped for a moment. There was no way he was being serious. He sounded serious, but that had to be the alcohol talking.

“Well then, why would I want to stop you?”

“You don’t have a choice. To begin with, it’s your job. More importantly, it’s the role you have to play.”

“I don’t buy into the idea of fate. My role is mine to choose.”

“Think whatever you wish, Lincoln. It doesn’t negate the truth. You will follow your path whether you believe in it or not. It isn’t for you to decide.”

“So you’re telling me I don’t make any decisions, all of this is just happening the way it is supposed to?”

“Exactly.”

“So how does it end? If you say anything other than with you dead or in custody, then you’re a liar.”

I heard him take a deep breath. “I will be dead when this is all over. It’s a shame really, I won’t get to see the changes I helped to usher in. Not from here anyway.”