The Sholes Key (An Evans & Blackwell Mystery #1) Page 25

  They scrambled in all directions. Sophia placed the sleepy baby in the chair and pushed him toward the young witness.

  “Motherhood suits you,” Theo remarked.

  Sophia ignored the comment and asked the witness, “What did you see?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first. The man, he stood looking at the crying baby. I thought he must be the father trying to calm his baby down because at one point, he tried to pick up the child, but the baby screamed louder. He looked around and then took off, probably after the mother. I felt like yelling at him, telling him he could not leave the baby alone, it was not safe. Then it hit me, maybe he was going to find the mother or call the police; and thinking the mother may come back while he was gone, he left the child.”

  “Didn’t he see you?” Sophia asked. “If he saw you, he might have thought you were the mother.”

  “I doubt it, because I was standing there.” She pointed outside the park. “And he was looking in that direction.” She pointed toward the trees. “When I went over to the baby, the park was deserted—even the man had disappeared.”

  “Do you live around here? Is it normally this quiet?” Theo asked.

  “On Saturday it’s busy, but, at night, unless you have a large dog, a woman doesn’t normally walk alone. When I saw the abandoned child it was nearing dinner hour, getting dark, most people are heading home from work and not many walk. That place there, as you see, it’s pretty secluded.” She paused. “I really hope you find the mother, what she did was horrible. You don’t abandon your baby like that.”

  “Yes,” Sophia said, “we hope we find her. By the way, in which direction did the man go?”

  “In that direction, toward the car park.”

  “What was he wearing? Did you see what car he was driving?”

  “What was he wearing? I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention to him, I was preoccupied with the baby.”

  Sophia rocked back and forth on her feet. “Was he wearing clothes for exercise or a business suit? Was he wearing a baseball cap or a top hat? Did he have a beard or a moustache? Was he wearing trainers or neatly polished dress shoes? Was he carrying groceries or an attaché case? Anything would be helpful.”

  “Come to think of it, he wore a cap—blue—had a logo on it but I couldn’t see what it was. Casual, not business, not carrying anything, I don’t know about the trainers. The clothing was dark. I wish I could remember more about the clothing. Beard or moustache? I draw a blank. Sorry, that’s all I have.”

  An officer came up to Theo and said, “The woman who owns the car, Clair Rheaume, lives nearby. We have taken a photo of her abandoned son and will be canvassing the neighbors for more information.”

  * * *

  Clair’s flat had olive green carpet that she had cleverly covered up with a white rug. The chairs and couches were in matching tones of oranges and yellow-greens. Tables were deep dark browns.

  There was one bedroom with both mother and baby’s bed. Black-and-white framed prints of the mother and child littered every inch of the walls.

  Theo said, “Constable, take one of these photos and get them made up into missing woman fliers.”

  “Right away.” Dorland took one and left the room immediately.

  Sophia turned round in the room. “I don’t think we’ll find anything here. He didn’t bring her here. But where he did take her? How hard can it be to find background on this man? He has to have parents, a mother or a father. They most likely live in England.”

  “We’ll find it,” Theo said. “He has to have left a record somewhere. Don’t worry, we’ll track it down.”

  After taking a few pictures from the flat, Sophia accompanied Theo back to his office.

  “We know his name is Kenneth Raleigh Houghton,” Theo said. “What if his mother used her maiden name? Can’t you use any of your resources, Sophia?”

  “Don’t bother, we have it, we have it.” Dorland approached almost giddy with excitement, holding a piece of paper in his hand. “We found his mother’s address.”

  Theo grabbed the paper and the three of them left the office, sirens blaring, heading to an older part of town. Theo stared at the address. “Dorland, we’ve been there.”

  “Been where?” Dorland asked.

  “To this address.”

  Sophia leaned over and looked at the paper in Theo’s hand.

  “When?” she asked. “When did you go there?”

  “When we searched for cars with the same registration numbers as the CCTV tapes, we went to this woman’s house. She was not home. We went to this woman’s house! He could’ve been hiding the dead bodies there.” He slammed his fist down on the dash.

  * * *

  The house stood towering in the dark. No lights, no cars, no people. Dead quiet. Officers from DI Shields’ team were already there. They surrounded the house, ready to enter. When they broke down the door, Sophia went up behind Theo and followed him inside. Torches in hand, they went through every room, confirming it was empty, while another team entered the garage, searching for freezers.

  Sophia stood in the living room, listening as the officers cleared each room. Her killer was not there. Turning on a table lamp, she looked around the living room. The house was old, smelled musky, and although it looked tidy, it looked like it had not been dusted in months.

  “Where’s the old woman who lives here?” she said aloud, not really asking anyone. “I mean it’s almost bloody midnight and where is she? At a party?” Frustrated she went and looked at the photos displayed above the fireplace. Mostly old pictures, taken at least twenty years earlier. In one, a young pretty woman sat in an armchair holding a little boy on her lap. She wore a little skirt and her hair hung down behind her shoulders showing her very long, flashy silver earrings.

  Another picture showed a boy, about the age of six, with a small fish. He stood in the woods, small cabins behind him. He had a large smile across his face. He was proud to catch that fish even though it was small.

  The third picture was in color, a recent photo. A man sat on a bench in the park, the man she met at the library. He looked happy in the photo. Why are you kidnapping women off the street and murdering them? Sophia asked the photo.

  “Gov, I think you need to see this.” Dorland motioned Theo into one of the bedrooms.

  Instead of following them, Sophia entered another bedroom. The closet door was missing. Checking the other rooms, she found them all missing. Not even the bathroom had a door. All the interior doors were gone. The next bedroom Sophia entered belonged to a boy, a boy no older then twelve. Wallpaper old and peeling, browned over time, the repeating print of trout on a hook. Fishing rods stood neatly in a corner, and a camouflage-fishing hat hung on a hook behind the door. Clothing belonging to a young boy hung in the closet over a blue plastic box that was filled with small toys of action figures and small cars. Other than the missing closet door, there was nothing strange about the room.

  Sophia found Theo and suggested he look over the garage. “See if they can find boxes that belonged to the boy… I mean, to the man. Any old clothing from when he was younger.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but look for anything that might explain why he advanced to killing women.” Heading into the kitchen, Sophia opened the cupboards one by one. The top plate in the stack of plates had a layer of film on it. There were pans with their lids sitting on the stove, clean and set neatly on the top of each burner. A sticky film lay on the top of each lid.

  “This house is abandoned. It hasn’t been used in months,” Sophia muttered to herself. “Look at the state of these pots.” Going over to the sink, she turned on the taps; after a bit of spurting, the water began to flow. “Someone is paying for the utilities here.” Opening a cupboard above the stove, she found a row of cookery books, many with cookie recipes: chocolate, coconut, nuts, and others. No wonder he used pastry cutters. She searched each drawer for any type of cutter but found none.

>   Officers were searching the old lady’s room, yanking on locked cupboard doors. Entering the bedroom closet, Sophia opened cardboard boxes stacked against the back. The boxes were full of books, hundreds of them, all romances. Sophia dumped the books onto the floor. Her eye caught something in the corner of the closet. She moved a few boxes out of the way to reveal a pile of blankets and a small pillow with stars and suns—the bedding of a boy. Sophia moved the bedding and found an action figure, a Superman action figure.

  Sophia moved to the garage. Theo was rifling through layers and layers of boxes stacked one on top of the other. “Have you found anything yet?” she asked him.

  “Nothing, nada, zip, zero, no. A lot of crap, things that should have been sold ages ago, worthless and rotting now. Not anything useful to our case, like a body or corpse or hell, anything dead, besides the two mice Ropa found. What about in the house?”

  “Lots of cookbooks on how to make delicious cookies.”

  “Wow, exciting. Planning to take any home?”

  “Also, for so many cookie recipes, there are no pastry cutters. Do you find that odd?”

  “You don’t need pastry cutters to make cookies, Sophia, sorry.”

  Sophia kicked a box. “Maybe if we all get some sleep, we can think fresh in the morning.”

  “I just don’t get it, Sophia. This must be our guy, but there is nothing. We know where he lives, but he’s not there. I posted an officer outside his house, nothing. We know where his mother lives, but she’s not here.”

  “Even if this man is innocent,” said Sophia, “where the hell is he? It makes no sense. The house looks like it isn’t even lived in. Did they check the hospitals?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll get Dorland to ring the hospitals.”

  “Our killer is with his next victim as we speak, and we’re not even sure we have the right man.”

  “Gov,” said Dorland, approaching them. “You might want to… no, you have to come see this.” Dorland stared at Theo with a blank look on his face. Suddenly turning, he went back into the house. Theo motioned her to follow him.

  “Old lady’s bedroom,” Dorland said as he walked. Officers stood around a large, wooden cupboard along one side of her bed. Sophia took a deep breath and slid her arm between two officers, pushing them aside. She would slowly work her eyes toward whatever demons lay in the closet before her.

  At the bottom of the wooden cupboard, Sophia’s eyes came across a skeleton folded in the fetal position. A faded blue and yellow daisy nightgown underneath a red bathrobe hung loosely to the bones. Around the bony neck hung a silk scarf. The skull, with bunches of long dark hair still clinging to it, leaned against the sidewall of the cupboard. The mouth hung open with dentures hanging loosely from its jaw.

  “Kenneth’s mother,” Sophia said.

  “Will someone call SOCO?” Theo asked.

  “The method of her death matches the writer’s exactly, strangled with a silk scarf. At least we know he committed both murders. This is our confirmation. Thank God!” Sophia exclaimed. “This looks like she is partially mummified, perhaps from being locked in the closet. Parts of her skin are still attached.”

  “Disgusting,” Dorland remarked. “The remnants of skin look like leather, all brown and—”

  “She must have been in here years and yet the yard, the house, it’s maintained; meaning the son comes by and does the housework. Knowing his mother is in the closet rotting. What a sick bastard,” Sophia said.

  “Wouldn’t the neighbors complain about the smell?” an officer asked.

  “Have you heard of the Harvey case from the 1960s?” Dorland said. “In North Wales, another mummified woman was found in a cupboard. Apparently, if you have warm dry air circulating in the cupboard, it will dry out the body tissues slowly to cause mummification.”

  “I want the house searched,” Theo said to the officers. “Top to bottom. I want to know where the son is hiding out, where he is taking his victims. If it’s not here and not at his flat, then where? Search all the desks. There has to be a record somewhere. They must keep property somewhere else, perhaps a summer home or a cottage.”

  Once again, they searched through the house, leaving a path of destruction behind. Officers stormed every desk, every crevice. Sophia went into the kitchen. At the sink, she splashed cold water on her face. Opening every cupboard, she saw plates old and faded, with matching cups. But as to a place for hiding bodies, there was nothing.

  Wandering about the living room, she looked over all the photos again on the wall and on the mantle. “Has anyone found any photo albums?” she called out, loud enough to be heard throughout the house. A series of loud negatives came at her from every direction. “Check the photos, any photos with anything that resembles property.”

  Theo came to her from another room.

  “What have you found?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you finish going through the clothing?”

  “Why do you feel the clothing is so important?” Theo asked.

  Heading back to the closet, she turned on the light inside. One by one, she went through the clothing. Jumpers, trousers hung neatly; one black suit looked as if it had never been worn. Heading to the dresser, she went through the drawers. She flipped through undergarments and pants. From the next drawer, she took each one of the neatly folded t-shirts and threw them on the floor.

  Theo watched her. “What exactly are you looking for?” he asked.

  “Fish.” She turned each shirt over back to front, and then threw it back into the drawer. “Aha,” she exclaimed, holding up one shirt for Theo to see. She got up off her knees. The shirt had a large fish, a green and brown trout on the front; and in the right corner, a small logo.

  Theo raised an eyebrow. “What is that? Leary’s Fishing Resort? What the hell is that?”

  “Fish. This seems to be all we have to go on.”

  “Have you gone mad?”

  “Perhaps, but unless you have something more substantial, take this.” She handed him the shirt. “I want to find the resort and go there at once. This may be where he’s taking them.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “The one photo in the whole house where the boy is happy is at the fishing resort. The walls of his room are covered in fish; he has fishing poles. This is a hunch, I know, but worth a look.”

  Theo phoned in for more information. One of the officers recognized the place at once. “I used to go there as a child. It’s closed down, abandoned. The fishing was good for a few years but—”

  “How far from here is it?” Theo asked.

  “A two-hour drive.”

  “We’ll head there at once and search for any cabins still standing,” Theo said.

  * * *

  Sophia and Theo rode with Shields in his Land Rover. They arrived at Leary’s Fishing Resort well past midnight. The road was overgrown and full of holes. Sophia, incredibly sore from exhaustion, was functioning on adrenaline.

  Where a tree had fallen and blocked the road, they met up with other officers and armed response. “It looks as if the tree has been here for many years, I don’t see how the killer could have passed. We’re looking for another road,” one officer informed them.

  “That’s impossible,” Sophia said. He had to be there. He had to. This had to end tonight; she couldn’t keep playing his game.

  Theo walked up beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re shaking.”

  She coughed and her bottom lip began to quiver. “I’m so tired, Theo, I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll keep looking. He has to be somewhere in England.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry I failed you. I can’t seem to get anything right.” She headed towards the Range Rover but instead kept walking. Suffocation overtook her.

  Theo ran up behind her. “Sophia, where are you going?”

  “I need air, Theo, I need to clear my head.” She turned to him. “He’s g
oing to get away if we don’t act now. His latest victim may still be alive and we don’t know anything. Hey, what’s that?”

  “What?”

  Sophia pointed farther ahead and ran. “Look, look, another path.” She followed a set of tire tracks that led into the trees, barely visible with the headlights. “Theo, do you have a torch?”

  He turned on the light and ran along beside her. The road didn’t go far, but someone had found a path through the trees large enough for a vehicle. Following the hidden road, Sophia and Theo met up with the main road, just past the fallen obstacle.

  “This must be the way he went. And the tracks are fresh,” Sophia said excitedly. Her stomach did somersaults. They would catch the killer. “We must follow this path.”

  “How much farther, you reckon?” Dorland asked.

  “Four or five miles more to the cabins,” replied one of the officers.

  The teams got into their vehicles and took up their chase again, passed the tree and under a wooden sign that read Leary’s Fishing Resort to within a mile of the cabins.

  “We shouldn’t go on by car,” Theo suggested. “It will attract too much attention, especially out here in the woods. I want the volume on all radios and phones lowered and noise kept to a minimum.” Theo sent an armed response team ahead. “Once we confirm he’s here and exact location, we move. I don’t want him escaping into the forest in the dark.”

  Hours seemed to pass before they finally heard over the radios, “We see a vehicle. A light is on in one of the cabins; we are moving closer for a look.” More moments passed in silence. “We hear noise within but all windows are covered. If we go in, we have to go in blind.”

  “Wait until we arrive. Make sure no one leaves the cabin,” Theo whispered.

  They ran forward until the first cabin came into view. They crept forward. A chill went through Sophia’s spine. They were so close. So close.

  Men with guns drawn slowly made their way up to the cabin door. No more than one room, the occupant had managed to keep it in good repair. It was still painted the original dark camouflaged green. Theo approached the black Toyota and touched the hood of the car. He mouthed the word cold. The killer had been there all night. What had he done to his victim in those hours? Peering in the windows, Sophia saw the car was spotless, other than a large red stain behind the front passenger seat. The victim must have lain there bleeding on the floor during the drive to the cabin.