“It must appeal to some people. We found the receipt from the book dealer in New York that Mr. Anderson special-ordered it from, an occult shop called The Dark Alter. He paid a pretty hefty price for it: five hundred dollars.”
The man’s eyebrows went up, but his face remained slack.
“From what I can tell, the Judge intended to contact you about something regarding its subject, which is another thing I’d like to discuss with you. Do you mind?”
“I suppose not,” he replied. “Hang on.”
He closed the door to let her in, but Melissa perceived a noticeable pause before the chain lock disengaged. It wasn’t an elongated lapse of time, just a second or two, but on impulse her hand glided to her belt holster and affirmed her weapon’s presence before the door came open. Her thumb flicked off the safety strap.
Frank opened the door and invited her inside.
Despite the clean white walls, the inside of the apartment was painted with shadows. Blinds covered all the windows in the living room and dining area, and the hallway on the far side of the living room appeared equally dim. Even in shadow, Melissa noticed Frank kept a clean house. The living room contained only enough furniture for a single occupant, but the tidiness of it compared to the sight of a freshly turned hotel suite.
Frank invited her into the living room and motioned for her to take a seat on the couch. Across from her stood a simple entertainment center housing a DVD player, VCR, and TV. Two open-faced bookshelves made up the lower half of the unit, each crammed to capacity.
Though she couldn’t read the title of every volume in the case, a majority of the books appeared centered on the subject of obscure religions and other strange practices. The names of cultures ranged from American Indian, to Babylonian, to Aboriginal, to some she’d never even heard of. The titles African Cults, Pacific Myths, Shinto Gods, and Zoroastrianism reminded her of the superstitiously oriented works she’d seen in Judge Anderson’s den.
Frank sat down at the other end of the couch. “All right, Detective, how can I help you?”
“Mr. Anderson seemed to have developed a recent fascination with Kale Kane,” she explained. “Along with your novel, we found a scrap book of various newspaper clippings about him. It was all current stuff, mostly articles written the day after Kane’s death, but Anderson had added notes in the margins that suggested he’d contacted the doctor from the St. Peter’s Asylum who pronounced Kane’s time of death, along with the county medical examiner who released the body. I spoke with both of them earlier today, and they remembered Anderson’s phone calls quite clearly. They told me he’d requested autopsy reports on Kane, proof he was dead—as if he didn’t believe it—and that he’d demanded to know where the body had been taken, even though neither of them had that information.” She studied him for a breath of silence then added: “They also remember talking to you about the exact same subjects.”
She paused to read his reaction, but Frank had broken eye contact at the mention of the asylum and now his gaze remained directed at the carpet. She found it ironic he’d revealed so much information through his body language alone. Originally, she believed if he had something to hide he’d know precisely how to do it, since he’d been a cop himself and knew all the signs. Instead, his fidgety movements and mild hesitations made it unmistakably obvious something about her visit bothered him.
“Still don’t know who I’m talking about?” she asked.
“I already told you I don’t,” he answered. “But I may know what he was looking for.”
“Tell me.”
His head came up and despite his civilian status the expression on his face reminded her he was an experienced detective. His look of weakness had vanished, and the switch in control between them happened in a heartbeat.
“You haven’t read my book yet, have you?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted. “I haven’t had the time.”
He nodded, as if she’d given the exact answer he expected. “Okay, here’s the short version: Along with my telling of the overall investigation, I revealed my belief Kane hadn’t worked alone during his crime spree. He had help.”
Frank Atkin’s statement jolted Melissa with the mental equivalent of a high-speed collision. The whole time she’d been considering the possibility of having to track a copycat, not a cohort.
For a moment, words failed her.
She cleared her throat. “I thought it was proven Kane was a loner.”
“That’s what we all thought at first,” Frank replied. “But if you look at the complexity of some of his crimes, weighed against his intelligence and education, there’s no question he had help.”
“Was this theory pursued?”
Frank shook his head. “Not officially. I didn’t come to this conclusion until after the case had been closed, and by then nobody wanted to hear about a potential reenactment of the Kane killings. Hell, they didn’t even want to think about it. Eventually, after I was unable to reopen the case through departmental channels, I started looking into things on my own time.” He spread his hands in front of him, as if watching sand slip between his fingers. “There simply wasn’t enough evidence to name a suspect.”
“What made you reevaluate your initial judgment of him?”
“Security systems,” he replied. His gaze reconnected with her eyes. “Locks did nothing to stop this man. He got through everything from household deadbolts to state-of-the-art electronics. It was the same with cameras. In every scenario where Kane encountered surveillance systems, all the cameras failed, capturing nothing but static. It didn’t matter if it was film in a standard VCR or a digital recording on a hard drive. And whatever was done to them stumped the pros we brought in to figure it out.
“Medical records show Kane suffered from mild retardation, not to mention having visual dyslexia. He dropped out of school after the seventh grade. Put simply, he didn’t have the brains or the skills to execute such jobs.”
Frank traced his scar with one finger while he spoke. “There was also something odd about his victims,” he added. “Kane would abduct a person from a high-rise downtown condo one day, then switch to picking off transients or runaways from the interstate. Inconsistencies like that led me to believe he was after certain individuals, not random victims like some of the profilers suggested.”
Melissa nodded thoughtfully. “Why go through all the trouble to sabotage security systems and risk working in confined environments like apartment buildings? Why not stick to remote locations, away from help or potential witnesses?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, if you’re correct, then this accomplice has been the real threat all along.”
Frank shook his head with a stern look of disagreement. “No. No way. Kane had help, but it was a team effort. If there’s one thing I learned from his history, it’s that he was rotten from the start. He liked to slaughter cattle as a child; collected knives and pitchforks; tortured other farm animals. He even gathered road-kill off the street like some people pick up fascinating stones. Sure, there might have been someone to help him figure out the more complicated ends of certain situations, but he was evil to begin with. I saw it in his eyes.”
“When was that?” Melissa asked.
He laughed without humor. “When he came back from the dead.”
CHAPTER 20
“Wow,” Tim’s mother said. “I wonder what’s going on over there?”
Tim glanced up from the passenger seat of the car. He’d been lost in thought, thinking about the evening ahead at Valleyfair, and feeling more than a tad nervous about seeing Mallory again. He knew it was just a casual outing, a simple get-together with the new girl, but there was also no denying the way his heart raced when he conjured the memory of her in his mind.