Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006

The Boxing Day Killer by Edward D. Hoch

“This is Beth Valparaiso, live from Toronto Harbor. Now back to you, Glen.” She waited until the red light blinked off, and disconnected her lapel mike.

“Good job, Beth,” her cameraman said. “Take the rest of the day off.”

“I wish I could, Foxy! Boxing Day is a holiday for normal people.”

Foxy O’Dwyer usually worked with her on weekend remotes. Sometimes he tried to flirt a bit, but he was twice her age and hardly the romantic type. He grinned and replied, “Since when are TV people normal?”

December 26th was on a Sunday that year, so it would have meant a day off for most people even if it hadn’t been a holiday. Beth had become accustomed to the Boxing Day holiday after moving to Toronto three years earlier to take a job as a local television reporter with CBC. She knew the post-Christmas holiday was not an occasion for prizefights but rather the remains of an old British tradition of rewarding servants and tradespeople with year-end gifts. When it fell on a Sunday it was never moved to the following day, as was Dominion Day, on the first of July. Boxing Day was always the day after Christmas, and like this day it was usually cold.

The Sunday papers had mentioned the Boxing Day murders, of course. For three years now, while the Christmas tree still glittered in Eaton Centre, gaily wrapped holiday boxes had been appearing around the city, containing the body parts of that year’s victim. The first had been a homeless runaway from Thunder Bay, a nineteen-year-old girl named Norma Durban. The second had been an ex-convict named Larry Amsterdam. Last year the killer had moved up a notch on the social scale, targeting a gift shop owner named Earl Sydney.

While Foxy stored his camera in the remote van and lowered its antenna, Beth walked to her own car across the street. They’d been at the harbor covering an overnight fire that had damaged some expensive yachts in dry dock on Lake Ontario. She wasn’t surprised to see Detective Constable Matt Bates of the Metropolitan Toronto Police stepping out of his car down the street. He saw her at once and waved.

“You’re up early,” he said by way of greeting.

“I always get to work the holidays. The married ones are home with their families. How about you? You’re a couple hours late for the fire.”

He shrugged. “The Arson Squad’s looking into it. Could have been kids with matches. But it’s Boxing Day. Everybody works.”

She knew immediately what he meant. “You don’t think he’ll do it four years in a row, do you?”

Bates shrugged. “What’s to stop him?”

“Maybe he moved or died or got religion.”

“Maybe.” He checked his watch. “Got time for a coffee?”

“Sure.” She glanced back to the remote truck and waved as Foxy pulled away. There was a Starbucks down the block, and they strode quickly toward it. Though the winter sky was clear, the temperature hovered around freezing, and a breeze off the lake made Beth thankful for the coffee. “Maybe by next Christmas I’ll be married and they’ll give me the holiday off.”

“I hope so,” he said with a little smile. “You’ve put in your time.”

She’d bumped into Detective Bates several times during the year, and she sometimes wondered if the meetings were more than accidental. He was unmarried, she knew, and no longer living with the young woman who’d been his companion until recently. Some of the other women at the station considered his chiseled features handsome, and Beth supposed they were, in a way. After a brief discussion of the fire she asked, “Do you have any leads on the Boxing Day killer?”

“Some.” He took a sip of coffee. “We’re trying to figure out how he chooses his victims, and just when he kills them. The condition of the body parts indicates the murders probably take place on Boxing Day, just hours before the boxes start turning up.”

“How ghastly! I don’t even want to think about it.”

“I’m working on a theory that he chooses his victims earlier in the year, but then waits till the holiday to kill them.”

“He must be insane.”

“Most serial killers are, even the ones who seem quite rational. After a string of killings, though, juries aren’t likely to accept an insanity defense.”

“You have to catch him before you start talking about juries.”

Bates nodded. “I know.” He finished his coffee. “But if my theory is correct, the killer is known to his victims.”

“How could one person know people as diverse as that? A teenage runaway, an ex-convict, a gift shop owner?”

“Drugs,” he replied at once. “A drug dealer might have had them all as customers. Larry Amsterdam, the ex-con, was in prison for assault and robbery, but he’d had a drug arrest too.”

“What about the others?”

Bates shrugged as he got to his feet. “Earl Sydney was gay, with lots of contacts around town. We’ve been checking them all for a year now.”

“No connection with the first two victims?”

“None that we can find. How late are you working today?”

“Till four. They might use my segments on the evening news, but I don’t have to be there.”

“I’ll bet the station is a dead place on holidays like this. Not much news unless there’s another killing.”

“The staff keeps busy. The sports guys all watch Sunday football on the Buffalo stations, and some of the news people usually have a poker game going.”

“Really?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“Maybe I’ll drop by the station later.”

“What for? Poker?”

He grinned. “Do I need a reason?” He took out a card and passed it to her. “That’s my cell phone number. Call me if you need anything.”

They left the Starbucks together and she waved to him. “See you later, Detective.”

“Take care.”

The Broadcast Centre between Wellington and Front Streets faced the vast Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It was conveniently connected to the array of underground walkways known as PATH that linked the buildings of downtown Toronto like the web of some giant spider. Beth was thankful for it on stormy winter days when she could cover the several blocks to City Hall or the Eaton Centre mall without setting foot outdoors.

The morning news was long ended by the time she returned from the fire scene. “Where’ve you been?” Glen Walker asked in a fatherly tone. He was the handsome grayhaired anchor of the morning and noon weekend shows. A few years back he’d co-anchored the nightly news until someone decided they needed a younger face.

“Coffee with Detective Constable Bates. He was down at the fire scene.”

“Learn anything more?”

“Nothing. It might have been kids playing with matches.”

“Arson?”

“That’s the preliminary suspicion, but it’s not Bates’s department.” She glanced around the newsroom. “Pretty quiet, even for a Sunday.”

“The sports department has a poker game going till the American football games start at one.” It was already nearly noon.

She poked her head in and found four of them seated around the small conference table. The ceramic Christmas tree that decorated it the previous week had been shunted aside to the top of a filing cabinet. Rich LeFavre, the weekend sports anchor, was dealing a hand of stud poker, and she could see a cluster of five-dollar bills for the ante. “We’ve got room for a fifth, Beth,” Rich called out. “Always happy to take your money.”

“Too rich for my blood,” she told him. She’d mainly wanted to see who all was in there, and was a bit surprised that Hayes Merritt was one of them. Hayes was a big deal, the station’s evening news anchor. She’d never seen him at the station on a Sunday, to say nothing of Christmas weekend.

Walker glanced up as she returned to the desk she shared in the newsroom. “No room for an extra?”

“You think I’m going to sit in on a stud game with Hayes Merritt? I don’t see you in there.”

“Afraid to take his money, Beth? He earns more than the two of us put together. Way more.”

“And he’s here on a Sunday afternoon, Boxing Day, instead of home with his wife and kids.”

“We’re all waiting. You know that. If a story breaks he’ll be on camera for the evening news.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. It was like sitting around in a hospital waiting for an elderly uncle to die. Once they got the word, the newsroom would spring into action. Until then, there was stud poker and American football.

“Want to take Foxy and go over to Eaton Centre? Find out how people are spending Boxing Day?”

“Now there’s excitement.” She thought about it and suggested instead, “I should dig out the clips of the previous victims, just in case we need them.”

“I think Merritt already has them lined up, but you can check it.”

She typed in the name of the first victim on her computer. Norma Durban. The dates sprang up on the screen: 6/10/01, 12/27/01, 12/28/01, 12/29/01, and every day into the new year. Then there were a few skips that gradually lengthened into weeks, then months. December 27th would have been the day the body parts were identified through fingerprints. That had been Beth’s first Christmas in the city and she remembered the story all too well.

But she hadn’t been here yet on June 10th of that year and she wondered how the dead girl had made the news that day. She brought up the tape and saw a familiar face. It was Constable Bates, leading three young ladies into the Dundas Street police station during a brief crackdown on women cavorting topless in the City Hall fountain. Their names were given and the middle one, her top suitably covered for television, was Norma Durban. The topless movement had been short-lived in downtown Toronto, more or less settled by the establishment of a “clothing optional beach” at Hanlon’s Point on the west side of the Toronto Islands, near the small island airport. But Beth didn’t remember any mention of Norma Durban’s involvement in it.

She picked up the phone and dialed the cell phone number Bates had given her. “This is Beth,” she said when he answered. “I wanted to ask you—”

He cut her off. “I’m on my way to your place right now. I’ll be there in five minutes.” His voice was gruff, all business, and she wondered what was up.

From the sports department came the sound of the American football game, and Beth knew without checking her watch that it must be one o’clock. The poker game would be put aside now for football, while they all waited for the news everyone expected.

As soon as Bates came through the station door she asked, “Has there been another killing?”

“I hope not. I’m here about that yacht fire you were covering.”

It had almost slipped from her mind. “What about it?”

He slipped off his topcoat and draped it over a chair. “The arson investigators found something, a book of matches from this station.” He slipped a photograph out of an envelope he was carrying.

She stared at a charred matchbook with the station’s call letters clearly visible. “I never saw these and I’ve been here over three years. We don’t give out matches any more. Hardly any businesses do, with the smoking bans.”

“Who would know about them?”

She thought of the men in the other room. “Hayes Merritt, I suppose. He’s been here longer than me. I’ll get him.”

“He’s here on a Sunday?”

“It’s Boxing Day,” she reminded him, as if he’d forgotten. “I’ll get Hayes for you.”

The weeknight news anchor left the TV set with some reluctance and followed her out to the newsroom. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

Bates showed him the photo. “The arson boys found this at the scene of the yacht fire this morning.”

Hayes Merritt grunted. “We haven’t had any of those around for five years, maybe longer.”

“The arsonist might have dropped it, assuming it would be destroyed in the fire.”

“Anyone might have dropped it. Believe me, Sergeant, we’re not so desperate for news that we go around starting fires.”

“By the time I got there the fire was out anyway,” Beth said. “All we had was a talking head of me standing there.”

Bates was still studying the picture. “No chance there’s a box of these still around the station?”

“Not that I’ve seen in years.” He headed back to the sports department.

Sergeant Bates smiled as he heard the sounds from the next room. “What are they doing, watching American football?”

Beth shrugged. “I guess so.” Then she remembered her reason for phoning Bates. She showed him the film clip of the first Boxing Day victim after he’d arrested her.

“Yeah, I remember her. She told us at the time she’d come here to attend the university. It wasn’t till after she was killed that we found out she was a runaway, if you can call a nineteen year old a runaway. Legally we couldn’t force her to return to Thunder Bay.”

“What about these other girls?”

“They were legitimate students. It was just a crazy college stunt. Durban hung around with them for a while but never attended classes.”

“She must have been living somewhere, perhaps with her killer.”

“That’s what we thought, but we could never prove it. Then after the second killing we decided it wasn’t a sex thing at all. Larry Amsterdam was a two-bit hoodlum who served a year in prison for assault and robbery. You’ve probably got a tape of that too somewhere. I was in on the arrest.”

“What about last year’s victim? Wasn’t he a gay activist?”

“Earl Sydney? Nice guy. He had a gift shop down on Queens Quay and was president of the small business council. He wasn’t that much of an activist, though.”

“Was he living with someone?”

“No, he lived alone. All three of the victims did, near as we can tell.”

“Did you ever arrest him?”

Bates was puzzled by her question. “No. Why do you ask?”

“I hadn’t realized the first two victims were people you’d arrested. Could there be a pattern there?”

He laughed at the thought. “What sort of pattern would that be?”

Beth shrugged. “Enemies of society, in the eyes of the killer. A girl who went topless, an ex-convict, a gay man.”

But Bates wasn’t buying it. “Someone like that wouldn’t wait a year between victims.”

“There could be a copy-cat killer with his own motives.”

“All three were the work of the same killer. We never released details of the dismemberments, but they were all done the same way.”

A cheer went up in the sports department and Beth said, “Maybe we’ve seen the end of it. Maybe there’ll be no Boxing Day killer this year. Here it is after one o’clock and nothing’s happened yet.”

Sergeant Bates grunted and prepared to leave. “How late are you working today?”

“Till four — unless a big story breaks. I started at seven this morning.”

“Suppose I come by at four to pick you up.”

“Pick me up? I have my own car.”

“I know. Maybe we could have a drink for the holidays.”

Those words were about the last thing she expected to hear from Matt Bates. They’d had a friendly enough relationship over the past three years, but it was a business relationship only — the press and the police. Now, suddenly, he seemed to be inviting her out on a date.

“I... I don’t know.”

“Sure, why not?”

“All right,” she agreed. “There’s a little place in the Distillery District that’ll be open today.” She wrote down the address for him.

“Great! I’ll see you there at four.” He paused at the newsroom door. “If you go out on an assignment this afternoon, call me. Okay?”

“What?” she asked, not certain she’d heard correctly. But by that time he was gone.

Beth strolled into the sports department to watch the game. The station was showing an old Christmas movie and she couldn’t blame them for choosing football instead. Walker and Merritt and LeFavre were all grouped around the TV monitor tuned to the Buffalo station, and she saw that Foxy o’dwyer had joined them. All seemed convinced that nothing was going to happen this year. The killings were over.

She remembered her questions to Bates about the third victim and decided to check the files. It would have been done a year ago, of course, and surely any arrest would have been noted. There was only one file film for Earl Sydney, in the spring of 2003, addressing a luncheon of the small business council. Seeing it again, she remembered that the station had run it at the time of his murder. She shut off the monitor and went back to the football game.

It was nearly three o’clock when Glen Walker took a call and told her, “Beth, there’s a truck skidded and overturned on the QEW in Mississauga, just past the Dixie Road exit. Take Foxy along and get some footage for six o’clock.”

O’Dwyer grumbled and got to his feet. “I’d rather watch the end of the game. Come on, Beth. We can take the van.”

She remembered her four o’clock date with Matt Bates. He’d said to phone him if she went out on assignment, but she figured she’d be back in time. “I’ve got an appointment after work. I’d better take my own car.”

She followed O’Dwyer out of the Broadcast Centre parking lot, in the shadow of CN Tower, and onto the Gardiner Expressway, which became Queen Elizabeth Way. The expressway was noted for its heavy traffic, bound for Hamilton, Buffalo, and Niagara Falls, but on Boxing Day it was surprisingly light. They encountered only minor delays on the way to the accident. The sunny day had turned cloudy, though, and as their vehicles approached the overturned truck a light snow was falling. O’Dwyer raised the tower of their transmitter and Beth checked her makeup in the car mirror. Then she got the clip-on mike from the truck and found a likely police officer to interview. The driver of the truck and been taken to the hospital in an ambulance but his injuries did not appear severe.

Even on a slow news day the story didn’t rate more than a few minutes. She thanked the officer and gave the mike back to Foxy. Her car was parked just behind the news van and as she opened the door he called to her. “Looks like your tire’s flat, Beth.”

Indeed it was. She cursed silently and reached for her cell phone. “I suppose most of the garages are closed today too.”

“Do you have a spare?”

“Sure, but I’m not up to changing it myself in this weather.”

He smiled at her. “I can do it. Wait in the van, out of the cold.”

“Thanks, Foxy. You’re a doll.”

He followed her into the van. “I’ll need the key to your trunk.”

She turned to hand it to him and a stark white odor seemed to blot out her vision. She had a fleeting memory of a childhood hospital stay, and then nothing.

Beth awoke gradually, trying to focus on what had happened. She realized at once that she was unable to move or speak. Her wrists and ankles were tied, and a piece of tape covered her mouth. She was lying on a rough blanket of some sort, and when she opened her eyes she could see the outlines of a dimly lit garage. A window was covered with a burlap sack, but she knew it was after dark.

Then Foxy O’Dwyer came into view. “You’re awake. I didn’t want you to wake up, but don’t worry. I’ll give you another dose so you’ll sleep through it all.”

She grunted and tried to speak through the tape, but only panicked noises came from her. Then she caught sight of a half dozen boxes of various sizes, piled on top of one another. Fully awake now, she tried to roll away from him.

He grabbed onto her leg and held her. “I didn’t want it to be you, really I didn’t! I spent the whole year hoping someone else would turn up. But there was nobody. A sacrifice had to be made, and you were the only one. Every year, on the day after Christmas, to keep the terrorists away. And it’s worked, hasn’t it? You’ll be the fourth, and there’ll be two more, if I can find them.”

He was mad, insane, and he was going to kill her. Six, why six? And why her? She saw him take up the cloth again and douse it with chloroform. “I’m sorry, Beth,” he said and stepped toward her. “Real sorry.”

She kicked out at him, forcing him back for just an instant. Then the burlap-covered window exploded inward and a familiar voice shouted, “Police! Hands up!”

O’Dwyer cursed and dove toward her, and Matt Bates fired a single shot to bring him down.

It was ten o’clock that night before Beth saw Matt Bates again. They’d checked her out at the hospital and were sending her home when he appeared at the door of the examining room.

“What happened?” she asked at once. “Is he alive?”

“Just barely, crazy as a loon. He made a statement. I guess you’d call it a confession.”

“How’d you know? How’d you find me?”

“I had a hunch the killer might have you targeted. When I found that matchbook from your station I wondered if one of your co-workers might be the Boxing Day killer. The matches hadn’t been available for years, but a station employee might have had some. And I noticed, as you did, that each of the victims had been seen on your TV news prior to their deaths. If you were the target, the fire might have been set to lure you out there. The killer would know you’d be sent for a fire report while everyone else was off. But with your cameraman along there’d be no chance to get at you. Not unless Foxy himself was the killer. When you didn’t show up at four o’clock I checked with the station and found that you and Foxy were on assignment. I found your car with the flat tire, conveniently caused by Foxy, and figured out what had happened. I raced out to his house and found the station van in the driveway. I heard his voice from inside the garage and smashed in the window.”

“He was apologizing, Matt, as he got ready to kill me! He said he needed six people and this year he couldn’t find anyone but me.”

“I realized it some time back, your connection with the three previous victims. He’d have taken you this morning at the fire scene if I hadn’t happened along. I stuck close to you lately for that very reason.”

“He said it was a sacrifice to prevent more terrorism.”

“That’s what it was in his crazed mind. One victim each year on Boxing Day, their names representing cities on each of the six inhabited continents. Durban from Africa, Amsterdam from Europe, Sydney from Australia.”

“My name!”

“Of course. You were South America. Six continents, six victims, six boxes for the body parts.” He paused and then said, “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“Home, hell! Take me to the station. I’m the lead item on the eleven o’clock news!”

An hour later she sat there with Hayes Merritt at her side and stared at the camera. “Good evening. This is Beth Valparaiso, reporting live on the capture of the Boxing Day killer.”