boxer shorts lay crumpled on the floor at its foot. Cain walked over and kicked the boxers until he could read the label inside. They confirmed the thief's nationality. Definitely an Englishman. The label read St Michael, the brand name of Marks & Spencer, the source of many a conservative Englishman's underwear.
He next tried the drawers in the chest. T-shirts were pushed into the top drawer along with more underwear and wadded socks. The next drawer down held a pair of folded sweatpants but nothing else. The final drawer held nothing belonging to the thief, just a stack of well-fingered brochures and menus from local businesses. As well as the obligatory welcome message from the hotel manager that no one ever reads.
Cain made a noise in the back of his throat. Scorn given timbre. He cast his eyes around the room. A TV rested on a table next to the recliner, but there was nothing of the thief's sitting on top of it. He turned instead to the built-in wardrobes that made up the wall next to the entrance door.
He stared at the double doors. If the thief had fled the apartment, then he would surely have taken his clothing with him. If the cupboard contained his coat and other belongings, then it was apparent that he'd be returning sometime soon.
Cain approached the wardrobe with a new idea in mind. It was the ideal hiding place. Concealed inside it, he could wait for the thief to return and then spring out when he was least expecting it. Smiling at his wisdom, he pulled open the doors.
'Ah,' he said.
The thief's coat was still there. But something else assured Cain that the thief hadn't fled as he'd first feared.
The barrel of the gun pointed directly at his face.
22
'you okay, hunter?' No. I was numb. The face on the screen was unquestionably my brother's. His hair was shorter than I remembered, and there were a couple of new lines at the corners of his eyes. But it was definitely John.
'This can't be right,' I said.
Reading the accompanying story wasn't helping. I couldn't concentrate for glancing at the photograph to remind me that I wasn't reading an unconnected piece of hack journalism. My heart drummed in my chest like a volley of cannon fire. Even the adrenaline rush of battle didn't affect me in this way.
'I don't believe it,' I said for what must have been the umpteenth time. 'There must be some kind of mistake.'
Rink wasn't so certain. He didn't know John the way I did. Okay, John was a self-centered, lying, cheating thief who'd run out on his wife and kids. But there was one thing I was certain of: my brother wasn't a depraved psychopathic killer collecting the bones of his victims as trophies. Rink was taking things at face value. He tapped the screen to prove his point. 'You can't argue with the forensics, Hunter.'
I shook my head like there was a wasp in my ear.
'No, I can't accept it. Something's wrong here.'
'How do you explain it, then?'
'I don't know, but I'm sure as hell going to try.'
Reading the news release once again didn't calm my racing heart. The FBI had been searching for the perpetrator of a number of brutal murders that spanned the country from coast to coast. The deaths had reputedly occurred over a three-year period. The FBI was unwilling to divulge the quantity dead at this man's hands, but would confirm that the killer's signature was the removal of skeletal parts. The killer had finally been named as John Telfer, a British subject living in the Little Rock area.
'It's all a load of bull,' I told the screen. Rink threw up his hands.
Fair enough, John had been in the country during the three-year period and had, by Louise Blake's admission, been employed as a delivery driver some of that time. This gave him the opportunity to have visited the places listed. But according to Louise, John had gone missing less than a month ago. Surely if he'd been involved in these random killings, he'd have left town much sooner than he had.
Experience indicates that a serial killer starts slowly, the time span between his kills narrowing with each attack as he craves more and more depraved satisfaction, until he reaches a point where he can no longer restrain the urge to kill. I suppose, with that in mind, John could have been doing the killings, and it was only now that he'd spiraled out of control and gone off on a final rampage.
Not that I was about to admit that for a second.
I read about a man and woman found murdered in a motel at the fringes of the Mojave Desert, how they'd both had fingers removed as trophies by the maniac the press had dubbed the Harvestman.
A witness related how the murdered couple had been seen picking up a stranded motorist the previous morning. The police examination of a vehicle found abandoned a short distance from where the motorist had been picked up showed it was registered to one Sigmund Petoskey of Little Rock, Arkansas. Mr. Petoskey had only this evening informed police that a former employee, John Telfer, had stolen the vehicle. Tests of fingerprints inside the car confirmed that the driver had indeed been John Telfer.
Police and FBI agents were now searching for the location of a yellow Volkswagen Beetle stolen by the killer after murdering the young couple found dead at the motel. There was no corroborating forensic evidence at the murder scene to tie Telfer to the motel, but due to the balance of probabilities, the FBI felt that naming him as the chief suspect was justifiable under the circumstances.
'Justifiable under the circumstances?'
'It's a logical assumption when you think about it,' Rink argued. 'John breaks down, he's picked up by these motorists, then they go to a motel together. John then kills the couple, steals their car, and goes on his way, headed God knows where.'
I wasn't having any of it. 'No way. They say here that the car contained John's fingerprints. Why wouldn't he wipe down the car the way he's supposedly done at the motel?'
Rink shrugged.
'Maybe he didn't think about wiping down the car before he was picked up,' Harvey offered.
'According to the FBI, they've been searching for this Harvestman character for the past three years. Never once have they found any evidence of fingerprints before. Isn't it a stretch to think he'd forget to wipe down a vehicle he was driving if he was on a killing spree?'
