Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

listen. Going back from 2003, a serial killer, uncaught, anywhere in the States, trademarks are as follows: victims of choice are young women, blonde, roughly five-five to five eight, probably nurses. He rapes them, stabs them in the heart with a kitchen knife, cuts out their wombs post mortem, and then—and this is crucial—he blinds them, pins a note to their left eye with a meat skewer. The note is inscribed with a line from Don McLean’s song American Pie, ‘And them good ole boys were drinking whisky and rye…’ ending on a dot dot dot.”

He was silent for a moment and you could almost hear him thinking. “You know, I want to say that nothing springs to mind, and nothing does in terms of a name or anything, but it does sound kind of familiar.”

“You may be thinking of the British Butcher of Whitechapel case.”

“No, if I’m not making it up, this is one of those Midwest cases, or Deep South. You know, those places where everybody suffers from narrow head syndrome and Seth’s daddy is also his brother and his son.”

“That’s impossible.”

“But you get the idea.”

“I do. Will you have a look? There is a U.S. angle to this case which we never properly explored back in the day. And it’s resurfaced now.”

“Sure. If there is anything, it shouldn’t be hard to find with these details.”

“Appreciate it, Bernie.”

I hung up. I paced a bit more. I sat down again, talking to myself in my head. So, assume, for argument’s sake, that there was a guy, an American, in what Bernie would call Narrow Heads Ville. He is deeply disturbed and starts killing women in this ritualistic fashion. For some reason which is hard to fathom, he moves to the U.K., to London, and continues his killing spree. We investigate. Harry and his team fixate on Johnson. Johnson kills my wife to scare me off, I go home. And at some point during that period, Narrow Head Man suddenly and permanently stops killing. Maybe he died. Maybe he was miraculously cured.

But, fifteen years later, somebody kills Katie Ellison. The choice of victim is not part of a serial killer’s victim profile. The choice of victim is deliberate. But the killer imitates Narrow Head Man perfectly, in every detail, except that the victim is not a one hundred percent perfect match for Narrow Head Man’s victim of choice, she is a little shorter, and she is English, not American. The spelling of whiskey is also English, not American…

Where the Butcher of Whitechapel had been an American case, Katie Ellison was an English case.

It was as though the darkness in my mind slowly began to crack. Slivers of light began to filter through, things began to connect, link up and make sense. I reached for the file and began to leaf through it furiously, searching for a reference, and finally, there, on the third from last page, I saw it. And the memory flooded back. I sank slowly into my chair. I had it. I had the missing link. And it was a pinstriped suit.

THIRTEEN

The problem was how to prove it. I spent half an hour staring unseeing at the sky through the window and finally, I picked up my phone and called Harry.

“John, we haven’t sorted your ticket yet, but I’ve got the lad on it now.”

“Harry, why did the team drop the investigation against Brad Johnson?”

“John! Come on, mate!”

“Humor me, I am just curious. You were all crazy about him and then overnight, you dropped him as your prime suspect.”

“Um…” He paused and sighed. “It’s there in the file…”

“All it says is ‘acting on advice from the CPS’.”

He thought for a minute. “Yeah, they said they had received information and that they were satisfied Johnson was not guilty of the murders and that on advice from the Home Secretary, they were recommending that the case should not be investigated further.”

“Did that strike you as odd?”

“Yes, of course it did. And doubly odd when he showed up again and then Katie Ellison died. But if we were told not to go after Johnson, and we had bugger all else to go on, and the Home Secretary is telling us to drop it, what could we do? And the killing stopped, so there were no fresh leads. Look, can’t you just let it rest, John? Look, I’ll have the tickets couriered to you in the next hour, OK?”

“Sure. Thanks, Harry.”

I dialed again.

“Chiddester!”

“Good afternoon, Chiddester, it’s Stone here. I may have some information of use to you.”

“Really? What?”

“I need access to a file. In 2003, the Crown Prosecution Service advised the Serious Crimes squad that Brad Johnson, their prime suspect, was not guilty of the Butcher of Whitehall murders. No explanation. The Home Secretary then recommended that investigation of the case should cease. After that, there were no more murders. I am satisfied that I know almost everything that happened, and I know who killed Katie, but I can’t prove it. If I can see that file, I might just be able to bring it home.”

He was quiet for a long moment, then said, “Leave it with me.”

He hung up and I paced for half an hour, achieving nothing but a slight flattening of my path on the rug. Then the phone rang. I was surprised to see it was Bernie.

“That wasn’t difficult, Stone. Popped up straight away, but it was never solved.”

“I know.”

“Course you do. You know everything. Westminster, Colorado. Three girls killed over a three year period. Susie…”

“Don’t give me the names, I won’t remember. Can you outline the basic facts and then email me the file?”

“Whatever. The girls were killed like you described them, with the note pinned to the eye like you said…” He paused, like he was trying to