Death By Degrees (7 page)

“No, we weren’t aware of where he was.”

“We’re getting information that he has killed sixty-four people around the world. Is that true?”

“I cannot discuss the specifics of the investigation.”

“Tell us about William Jeffries.”

“No comment.”

Every reporter seemed to be talking at once. I could barely tell who was asking the questions.

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

“It’s irrelevant to the current case.”

“Our sources say that he abducted you when you were a child.”

Fine. They wanted to know, then I would tell them. All they needed was to check their own archives. The case had been carried on news outlets around the world.

“Yes, I was abducted as a child during a camping trip with my father. I was beaten into unconsciousness and when I woke my father was fighting with Jeffries. I acted and it resulted in the death of William Jeffries.”

“And you forgot all of this?”

“I was knocked out again and remembered nothing until recent events forced me to remember.”

“Why were you not charged?”

Seriously? “I acted in self-defence.”

“Why didn’t your father report the incident.

“I cannot speak for him. No further questions on this subject, please.”

They looked disappointed but actually respected my request.

“Do you believe that Duncan Crawford will strike again?”

“Unfortunately with serial killers they usually do not stop their crimes until they are caught or killed. We do not believe that there is an extreme risk to the people of Lyon as he is known to travel internationally to commit his crimes.”

“Do you believe he will stay in Lyon?”

“We don’t know. He doesn’t appear to stay in one place for very long and it is likely that he will find another location.”

“Why did he contact you directly?”

“It would appear that he did for the same reason he contacted you directly: he wants to make a spectacle of this. What we have here right now, it’s just feeding him.”

“Who are the other people on your team?”

“Someone within the office will release that information to you.”

The next question caught me somewhat off guard. “You killed William Jeffries, shot and killed another serial killer and then killed a corrupt police officer in an investigation that resulted in the deaths or arrests of several police officers. Do you intend to even try to bring Duncan Crawford in alive?”

“We will bring Crawford in the way he chooses. In those instances you have named, there was no other choice. Should Crawford’s actions leave myself or any other officer with no choice, that will have been his decision.”

“So you don’t feel responsible for killing three people?”

“What kind of a question is that?” I was getting annoyed. I looked over and noticed that Kara was looking at me. She looked upset, worried almost, that I had to answer these questions. There was something else as well that I couldn’t place. “Of course I do. I didn’t get into this job to kill people and I sure as hell didn’t want to kill someone when I was just a child. I will do everything I can to bring Crawford in to have him answer for his crimes, just as I made every possible attempt in the previous cases.”

Cho stepped in at this point. “One more question related to Duncan Crawford.”

“What are you doing to catch him?”

“Everything,” I said. “Every police service in the world is aware of who he is and what he has done. Every officer at every border checkpoint and customs terminal has his name and picture. His passport has been flagged. It will only be a matter of time before someone spots him.”

“If there are further questions, please forward them to me through the appropriate channels.” Cho had stepped forward once again, stared into the crowd and put an end to what was one of the worst press conferences I had ever been involved in.

Chapter Nine

E
ddie and
I survived the flight together despite having to tell him a few times to stop rapping out loud. Then he switched to classical and began conducting… next time, I was leaving him in Lyon. Or leaving his iPod in Lyon. Either one would work.

A pair of Finnish police officers were waiting for us when we landed and within minutes we were on our way to the crime scene. Going through customs was a breeze. If only it was always that easy; unlike when I brought back one cigar too many from Cuba. We made it to the site just over two hours later after driving along picturesque roads through wooded areas that reminded me of northern Ontario. One day I’d have to come back here with plans that didn’t involve digging someone up, and see everything the Nordic countries had to offer.

We arrived at Lake Päijänne and crossed the bridge to the island of Judinsalo. Our path would take us to the western side of the island where, just a few dozen metres from the shore, we would find the body. The sun had only just risen and the grass was still wet with dew.

The hike to the body took us through dense forest, and I couldn’t imagine having tried to find it without a handheld GPS unit. I was getting pretty good at following the device; maybe I’d try my hand at geocaching when this was all over.

The trees blocked out the midday sun and only a faint breeze blew between the leaves and branches. It was nice in the shade, just the right temperature and definitely not too hot to dig. I spoke with one of the officers about the case; his moderate understanding of English was just enough for us to get by.

The details were simple: Oskari Koskinen, age forty-two, had gone missing almost three years ago. He was a truck driver and had been working the night he had disappeared. His truck had been found the next morning on the side of the highway about forty kilometres south of where we now stood, the driver’s door open and the engine still idling. No one really knew what had happened. Koskinen had long suffered from depression and had just lost his parents in a car accident. Many believed he had simply parked his car and walked into the woods to meet his fate somewhere in the wilderness. Others blamed some unknown hitchhiker.

Now, we all thought differently. Crawford had probably posed as a hitchhiker and convinced Koskinen to stop. Once inside the truck, Crawford would have overpowered him, murdered him, driven him to his burial site and then ditched the truck. Police had investigated, but never found anything to suggest foul play. Recent events had revealed the truth; unless Koskinen had managed to bury himself, suicide was not an option anymore.

Najat was waiting for us at the dig site. She was accompanied by another police officer.

“Najat, you made it,” I said. “How were the flights?”

“Long,” she said. “I’m used to it though. I was just happy to make it here on time. The layover was longer than expected.”

“Nothing you could have done about it anyway, so don’t worry. You’re here now. Are you ready to do this?”

She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know, I’ve never done a dig on my own.”

“I’ve been present on a few of them. And they’re bringing in an expert to observe although he apparently won’t be doing any of the hard work. Between the three of us, we should be fine.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Detective Munroe. I couldn’t believe that I was asked to help. I mean, I know you would’ve preferred Dr. Heinlen, but-”

“I’ve worked with Heinlen before so he was the natural choice. I was looking for a very capable anthropologist and he said you were. Glad to have you aboard.”

“Thank you.”

“And please, just call me Lincoln.”

I knelt down beside the grave site, this one marked as well by a small pile of dirt that could have easily gone unnoticed. The Finnish police had brought the tools we needed, but this time we were to do the excavation. The expert that had met us at the site was only able to supervise thanks to a back injury. There were doubts in my mind about the validity of his excuse, but I had no issue with getting my hands dirty.

Najat and I began digging with a small spade, gently, softly, almost tenderly, to clear away some of the top layers of dirt. Dr. Teemu Gustafsson just sat there, on a folding lawn chair he’d had an officer carry in, and watched the dig while reading on his tablet. It was probably an academic paper he was reading, but I wanted to ask if it was erotica of some description;
Fifty Shades of Grey
, perhaps?

It usually wasn’t a good idea to upset experts. They tended to have friends in high places. My mouth remained shut as I brushed the dirt away, sweeping it to the side until the body began to appear. The stark white bones contrasted with the light brown dirt. There was a certain eeriness in the task, but I tried to reframe it in a positive light. It would, among other things, bring closure to family and friends to have him back – even if it was only in death. Questions would finally be answered, worries put aside; the grieving process could now begin for those left behind.

The dig took us the better part of the afternoon, carefully brushing away the dirt to expose the truth we had already expected: Koskinen had been murdered, wrapped in white linen and buried in a shallow grave. The telltale cross disturbed the smoothness of the skull. It was another confirmation on a long list of question marks: Crawford was responsible for this one as well.

The connection was unmistakable, the facts undeniable. As much as I wanted to believe that it was impossible for one person to commit murders all around the world, it was time to accept that fact. We knew how he had done it. It had been easy for him to travel the world as a pilot. Customs was a joke in comparison to the average person. Even then, it still required so much work, so much planning to pull it off. Every answer brought more questions. We now knew how Koskinen had died, but we still didn’t understand why.

I dodged a bullet by not speaking Finnish; notifying family members was the worst part of the job by far. It never got easier, and even with all of post-traumatic stress behind me, it still was something that nearly brought me to tears every single time. For years they had been waiting, holding on to that hope that their loved one was just missing, that one day they would walk through the door like nothing had happened. I had to be the one to destroy that dream, to tell them that no matter what they weren’t coming home.

It was the worst with children. How do you tell someone that their five-year-old ran out in front of the bus at school and won’t be coming home?

I felt for anyone who had to break the bad news of anyone’s passing, whether it was a police officer notifying the family or a military officer going to a person’s home to tell them their loved one had been killed overseas. The job of notifying for accidents and natural deaths was bad enough, but for murders? Those were notifications that didn’t need to happen.

It was an idyllic thought; one that would never come to pass. There would always be death, there would always be violence.

It was evening when we arrived back in Helsinki. The remains of Oskari Koskinen had gone with Najat and Dr. Gustafsson to the Helsinki University Central Hospital for a post-mortem examination, while Eddie and I had returned to the Finnish Police office. The police in Finland were a national agency with two-dozen local departments throughout the country. The concept of a national police force was an interesting one, and far different than the Canadian standard.

We had our national force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP, provincial forces like the OPP, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and the
Sûréte de Québec
, but we also had municipal forces in cities such as London, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and really any larger municipality. It was cause for confusion when officers from the municipal, provincial and national levels could all be working on the same case. Throw in national security organizations like CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), Immigration, Border Patrol and things got even messier.

A national police force made a lot of sense. Ease of communication and information sharing, consistency across the country and even something as simple as officers being able to relocate anywhere in the country they wanted to without losing their job or having to start with a new organization. We had that benefit within the OPP, but it only extended to Ontario - not that I’d had the desire yet to relocate.

Eddie and I had a couple of hours to kill before meeting Najat at the airport for our flight out. It was time we used to review the Koskinen file with the Finnish investigators. We knew he had been missing for three years, presumed murdered by a hitchhiker or dead by suicide although no evidence had ever been found to support either theory. Just an abandoned truck, far from where the body was buried.

Detectives had dusted the truck for prints but found none aside from Koskinen’s own. There wasn’t a stitch of evidence to build a case from and the investigation went cold within days. Anyone and everyone who knew Koskinen was spoken to, but no one could shed any light on the case. As time went on, they were left with the possibility of suicide and then it was just a matter of waiting for someone to find the body.

“The area where the truck was parked, was it pretty remote?”

“Yes,” said one of the detectives. I couldn’t remember his first name, but the tag on his uniform read Niskavaara. “It is rural, but still well-traveled enough. We were surprised no body was found.”

“Do you know if Koskinen would have had his medication with him?” Koskinen had various prescriptions for his depression but none of the medication had been found either in the truck or at his residence.

“His family said he usually did. Sometimes he was gone for a couple of days, so he brought it.”

“If Crawford saw the medication in the truck, he could’ve used that to make his plan,” I said. “Leave the truck idling on the side of the road, door ajar. Makes us think he just walked away from it all, took the pills with him and overdosed.”

“Then Crawford did a good job.”

“He’s smart, that much we know. Cunning, dangerous, and determined. The list goes on. I hate to admit it, but I underestimated him. I never should’ve done that. There’s no way he could’ve gotten lucky sixty-four times and never even shown up on anyone’s radar.”

“Murders like this are harder to solve.”

“Definitely. Most of the time the killer is someone known to the victim. When it’s not, it’s a hell of a lot harder to suss out the details. And when the killer doesn’t even have a connection to the country let alone the victim…”

“So he’s a pilot?”

“Was a pilot up until six months ago when he quit his job. Never gave them a reason either. Flew all around the world for two decades and then handed over his wings without saying a word.”

“So travel would have been easy for him.”

“Yeah, he went just about everywhere. He flew cargo so his routes were pretty scattered sometimes. Gave him a chance to see the world and find his victims.”

The detective looked up, pondering. “I wonder how he chose them. He must have been to more places than that.”

“He definitely didn’t kill everywhere he went. The first missing person linked to this case went missing three-and-a-half years ago, the most recent only a few months. He was averaging close to two kills a month. If we knew what led him to his victims, it might help us stop him before he can strike again.”

“There’s nothing similar?”

“Nothing. Different ages, races, genders, backgrounds; there doesn’t seem to be any one thing to bring them all together. It seems like he picks them at random, but I’m not sure about that.”

“Why not?”

“Everything seems too thought out for that. I can’t see him leaving that much to chance.”

He nodded, unsure what to say next. I couldn’t expect much of him, he’d only been on the case for a few hours. Not that I had been on it much longer; not like I had anything better to contribute.

I stood up and walked into another office to find Eddie hunched over his laptop and typing with a vigor I couldn’t imagine. He’d been quiet all day, staring at his smartphone while I dug in the dirt and using a netbook in the car on the ride there and back. Every time I saw him I swore he had a new electronic device with him.

“Anything?”

He jumped at the sound of my voice and pulled the headphones out of his ears in the process. “Sorry, detective. Startled me.”

“Lincoln’s fine, Eddie.”

He nodded and looked back at his screen then spun the laptop around so I could see it. “Just been going through all of the locations for the burials. Had to get the details from each e-mail and then plot it here. Figured it would be good to have them all plotted on a map.”

“Nicely done. Can you copy that over to my computer when we get back?”

“Sure. I’m not done yet, though. I’m still working on getting all of the information I need, and there’s a lot more that I need so it might be a bit before I finish it. Although that depends on how quickly the other services send me their files. But if you click on one of the points…” He slid the wireless mouse across the table to me. I scrolled over to the mark just north of Helsinki. “Not that one. Not yet.”