The Canefield Killer - A John Riley Novel

Chapter 4

Riley ordered a vodka and seven and drained it while standing at the bar, then ordered another and took it over to a table. He wasn't even out of the country yet, and already he had had enough of Barbados and their problems.

He had slept on the plane from Seattle to New York, but there was a delay somewhere, and Riley found himself facing a seven-hour layover in La Guardia. With the time change, his plane hadn't touched down until a little after 10 PM. The next flight to Barbados didn't leave until five in the morning.

Riley had walked through the deserted airport to the gate where his plane would eventually depart. The desk at the gate was abandoned, and a few people had stretched themselves across several airport chairs and fallen into what had to be a very uncomfortable sleep.

The industrial carpet in this wing of the airport was worn bald in places and had stains big enough to be confused for a pattern. The upholstery on almost every chair was ripped in one place or another, and the stale air had the hint of urine.

Riley had backtracked until he found a bar. Sitting at the table, he drained half of his drink and pulled a sheaf of papers from his carry-on and began leafing through the reports on the Barbados crime scenes.

After ten minutes of not really reading any of it, Riley put the papers back into the FedEx envelope and called Dimes.

No answer.

He ordered another $8 drink and drew a crude replica of the sketch he had made that morning. He put X's where each body had been and circled the two that were cops. Below it he wrote "Charles Larry? Missing??" and underlined it.

That was it. That was all he had.

It was going to be a long trip.

***

By the time the flight finally left for Barbados Riley was exhausted, but still couldn't sleep. He was sitting at a window, the seat next to him empty. The aisle seat held a small blonde who was currently more dedicated to her sleep than Riley was. She had her chair reclined, and her head rested on pillow tilted towards Riley; her mouth hung open, and she snored slightly.

Riley watched her for a few seconds. She had a small nose, with a spattering of freckles across it. Her eyelids twitched as she slept. Riley smiled and sifted through the papers, hoping to actually read the reports this time.

Everything in them was handwritten. And not everyone who had written something had great handwriting. Riley was starting to believe that, instead of a photocopy machine, the Barbados Police had scribes dedicated to making copies of documents by hand.

Weekes had said that their killer had a body count of 6, but the police only had five corpses; all with the same MO. The bodies had all been dumped in a sugar canefield. The cause of death was blunt trauma to the head. Based on the shape of the blow and some wood fragments found in the wounds, forensics speculated that a cricket bat was the weapon of choice. All of the women were found naked, and their clothes had never been recovered. None had been sexually assaulted, although two had engaged in sex within their last twenty-four hours. All of the women were tied, one of them post-mortem, usually with their hands and feet behind them. There was no evidence of semen on or around the bodies. A few of the women had been cut; always post-mortem.

And there were postcards.

Weekes had included photocopies of the postcards the killer had left on each of the victims. The quality of the photocopies in the package were so bad that Riley couldn't make out any of the pictures. The report described them as "nothing special." Typical tourist postcards, that also happened to be the killer's way of keeping track of his body count.