A Killer Like Me (11 page)

Mercifully, the jukebox had run out of quarters.

“Did you hear about the storm?” the bartender asked Murphy.

He shook his head. “I was on the phone.”

“Yesterday it was just a depression. Today it’s a tropical storm. They’re calling it Catherine. I guess it’s the third one this season, but I didn’t hear anything about the first two.”

The satellite imagery had shown the storm off the west coast of Africa.

“It’s too soon to get worked up about a storm that far out,” Murphy said. “And it’s too early in the season. The bad ones always come late.”

“Since Katrina, they all make me nervous.”

Murphy had three more beers, then drove his eight-year-old Toyota to his apartment and went to bed. He couldn’t fall asleep, so for a while he tried to read a Dennis Lehane novel, but he couldn’t concentrate. Not with Kirsten popping in and out of his head every few minutes.

Finally around noon he started to nod. He put the book down on his nightstand, turned out the bedside lamp, and closed his eyes.

Tuesday, July 31, 1:40
PM

She opens the door quickly, without so much as a peek. As if she doesn’t have a care in the world on this beautiful afternoon, along this safe, picturesque cul-de-sac.

Hasn’t she read the newspaper? Doesn’t she know there is a killer loose?

She is thirty-six, divorced, with two small children. Before she left her husband they had a lakefront address. Now she lives in this cozy two-story cottage that her husband bought as investment property. Last year in the divorce, she wrested sole ownership of it from him, along with custody of the children and a hefty monthly child-support check.

The killer’s research is thorough.

She steps into the doorway. Her brown hair is pulled into a long ponytail. She wears a blue T-shirt, thin cotton shorts, and sneakers.

“Can I help you?” she says, her dark eyes shining. She is slightly out of breath.

With the door open he can hear the rhythmic pump of up-tempo music mixed with a female voice giving instructions. It’s an exercise video. The woman was working out.

He is dressed in a white shirt, maroon tie, and dark dress pants. His car is parked at a shopping center almost a mile away. In his left hand he carries the
Book of Mormon
. “My name is Joseph Smith,” he says. “I’m with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

She frowns and takes a step backward. “I’m not really interested, but thank you.”

He steps closer and raises the book. “I won’t take but a minute of your time, ma’am. I promise. But can I just show you one thing from the
Book of Mormon
?”

A look of mild annoyance crosses her face as she glances up and down the street. Don’t Mormons always travel in pairs? Perhaps she senses danger. But it’s the middle of the day. The sun is shining. She lives in a safe, quiet neighborhood, an island paradise rising above a sea of filth.

He opens the book, careful to keep the brown cover facing the woman. Inside the pages, he has carved out a rectangular space. The task was harder than he thought, at least two hours hacking away with a box cutter twenty pages at a time until he reached the back cover.

Concealed inside the empty space is a one-million-volt stun gun he bought off the Internet for a hundred dollars. The Streetwise SW1000 has a hard plastic case, is only eight inches tall, two inches wide, and one inch thick. It fits perfectly inside the space he cut out of the
Book of Mormon
.

Powered by three nine-volt batteries, the stun gun delivers a devastating high-volt, low-amp blast that temporarily disrupts the central nervous system and will put a grown man on the ground. According to the manufacturer, the charge can travel though several layers of clothing.

He reaches toward the book with his right hand and closes his fingers around the stun gun. They tremble slightly. He has never used this device before.

In one swift movement, the killer rips the stun gun from inside the book and shoves the twin electric prongs against the woman’s chest, high above her breasts. He presses the activation button on the side of the device with his thumb, triggering the short electric explosion. As the million-volt shock slams through the woman’s central nervous system, her eyes roll back into her head and she collapses on the tile floor.

As the killer steps into the house, he kicks the woman’s feet out of the way and closes the door. He prays none of the neighbors saw him.

She lies on her back, eyes open. They roll around in their sockets as she tries to focus on his face. She is also trying to speak, but no sound is coming from her trembling lips.

The killer drops the
Book of Mormon
and reaches behind his back. He pulls a plastic cable tie from the waistband of his pants and loops it around the woman’s neck. He cinches it lightly, not tight enough to kill her but enough to prevent her from screaming. Or so he hopes. Murder is an art, not a science.

In a few seconds, the shock wears off and the woman starts kicking at him. He zaps her again. The faint smell of burning flesh drifts up toward him. He grabs her ponytail and drags her into the kitchen. Other than the TV, there are no sounds inside the house. He has steeled himself to deal with the children. On his way to the woman’s house he rehearsed what he was going to say to them.

Mommy fell down. Quick, help me get her up.

When they run over to help, he will simply zap them with the stun gun. If a million volts aren’t enough to kill them, it will certainly keep them quiet. Then he will do what has to be done.

God’s work requires sacrifices, both large and small.

But he sees no children.

He bends close to the woman. “Where are your children?”

Her mouth opens. Drool spills from one corner. She tries to speak but can’t. Maybe he has cinched the cable tie too tight.

“Where are they?” he says.

“Bedrooms,” she croaks, her choked voice barely audible. “Please don’t . . . hurt them.”

He rolls her onto her stomach and rips down her cotton shorts. Her buttocks are white and firm. He jabs the prongs of the stun gun against her right butt cheek and thumbs the trigger. The woman convulses. Her back arches in agony. The killer smiles.

He stands and pulls a butcher knife from a wooden block on the kitchen counter . . .

Ten minutes later, the killer strolls across the small den to the staircase. Upstairs he finds the children’s rooms. The girl’s room is on the right, the boy’s on the left. A bathroom stands between them at the top of the stairs.

The children are down for their naps.

The girl is six. He smothers her with a pillow.

He wakes up the boy. The nine-year-old is confused. The killer says he is Mommy’s friend. The boy nods like he understands. Mommy went out for a little while and asked him to watch the boy and his sister until she returns. Do you have any games you like to play?

Yes, the boy says, video games.

He and the boy play a colorful animated racing game for nearly half an hour. Then he strangles the boy.

The phone on Kirsten Sparks’s desk rang at 2:05
PM
. She was at her keyboard, banging out a follow-up article containing a few more meaningless, on-the-record comments from top NOPD officials, just like those she had included in the story that ran in today’s paper. The officials still had nothing to say about the alleged serial killer, nothing to say about Sean Murphy’s summary dismissal from the Homicide Division, nothing to say about the string of unsolved prostitute killings. They may as well have been commenting on the weather or the price of pork bellies.

The phone rang again. She snatched the handset from its cradle.

“Sparks,” she said.

“Meet me in the conference room in sixty seconds,” Milton Stanford whispered.

Kirsten glanced across the newsroom. Milton was standing beside his desk holding the phone to his ear. He was the newspaper’s managing editor, her boss, but two rungs up the ladder. Gene Michaels, the city editor, was her direct boss. Even in the rather informal world of the newsroom, most things followed the chain of command.

Milton hung up his phone and nodded to her.

Kirsten grabbed a notebook and a pen from her desk. When she looked back up, Milton had vanished. She headed to the big conference room.

No one was there. She walked down a long hallway to what everyone referred to as the little conference room. The wall separating the little conference room from the hallway was glass. The shades were down but the light was on inside. The dry-erase board on the wall outside that was used to reserve the room said,
SPORTS
—10:00
AM
. But that was from two days ago.

Kirsten knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a voice said.

She opened the door and found the
Times-Picayune
’s brain trust seated at the conference table. In addition to Milton Stanford, who had beaten her to the conference room and already taken his seat, there was Charles Redfield, the newspaper’s executive editor, whom everyone called Red; city editor Gene Michaels; and the editor of the photo desk, Stephen Phelps. The company lawyer also had a seat at the table. And at the far end sat Mrs. Darlene Freeman, the publisher.

“Have a seat and close the door,” Milton said. “I’m sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger, but the phone in here”—he pointed to the multiline extension at the center of the table—“is busted and I had to go to my desk to call you. We’ve got something very important to talk about.”

There were eight seats around the dark wooden conference table, three on either side and one at each end. The seat nearest the door was vacant. As Kirsten laid her notebook on the table and sat down, she noticed a padded manila envelope in front of Mr. Redfield. The flap had been torn open. A pair of yellow rubber gloves, the kind used for washing dishes, lay beside it.

Milton Stanford spoke first. “We received a package in the mail this afternoon, a little over an hour ago. We think it’s from the serial killer. The mail room opened it. When they saw what was in it, they brought it to me.”

No one said anything. Kirsten got the impression that she was the only one who didn’t know what was going on. The meeting had obviously been in progress for a while before she was summoned. “What was in it?” she said.

Charles Redfield cleared his throat. “A letter and a . . . box. The box appears to contain a severed human finger.”

“A what?” Kirsten said.

“We’re pretty sure it’s real,” Milton said. “The killer, or at least the letter’s author, says it is from the last victim, the woman killed under the Jeff Davis overpass.”

“Have you called the police?” Kirsten said.

Redfield shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Why not?”

The company lawyer spoke up. He was small and thin and wore a baggy suit. Kirsten had only spoken to him half a dozen times over the years. A pair of reading glasses sat midway down his nose. “The package and the letter are addressed to us. We don’t know if it’s a hoax or not, and we certainly have the right to examine our own mail before contacting the police.”

Kirsten looked at the managing editor. “You just said you’re sure it’s a real finger.”

Milton looked down at the table. “I said we’re
pretty sure
it’s real.”

“We’re going to call the police very soon,” Redfield said. “But first we have to decide what to publish. This may very well devolve into a First Amendment fight with the police department and the DA’s office.”

“What does the letter say?” Kirsten asked.

Redfield had several eight-by-ten photo sheets on the desk in front of him. As he slid one of the pictures to her, he nodded to Phelps, the photo editor. “Stephen took these pictures himself. No one outside of this room knows about this.”

Kirsten understood that to mean that she was supposed to keep her mouth shut. She looked at the photo of the letter.

DEAR EDITOR:
THIS IS THE KILLER OF, AMONG OTHERS, THE TWO HARLOTS YOU DISKOVERED RECENTLY. TO PROVE THAT I AM HE, I HAVE INKLUDED A FINGER FROM MY MOST RECENT “VIKTIM.” ADDITIONALLY, I HAVE INKLUDED A CYPHER THAT WILL REVEAL TO YOU MY BIRTH NAME AND AN EXPLANATION OF WHY I WAS CHOSEN TO DO THE LORD’S WORK. IN EXCHANGE, I DEMAND THAT YOU PRINT THIS LETTER AND THE AKKOMPANYING CI(Y)PHER ON THE FRONT PAGE OF YOUR NEWSPAPER WITHIN TWO DAYS. IF YOU DO NOT, I WILL UNLEASH A KILLING RAMPAGE THE LIKES OF WHICH THIS CITY HAS NEVER SEEN. SINCE THE POLICE ARE SO DIMWITTED, WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF DETEKTIVE MURPHY, I WILL TRY NOT TO STRAIN THEM. NEW VIKTIMS WILL BEAR A SPECIAL MARK, AND IN FUTURE KORRESPONDENCE I WILL ADDRESS MYSELF TO YOU BY MY TRUE NAME—THE LAMB OF GOD.

P.S. EVEN MURPHY DOESN’T HAVE A CHANCE OF KATCHING ME.

XMOIIOVHEZZLCOOCLILELAKDLKAJOIUWETYEO

TPAOIPOICZXNQUTIJKSLOIGHFJIGJKIWOBNMVC

BXVZMKJIUEGJHGUTHRJUGNSHYTJUIHDNBHFUR

YRBCJUKSIRHFJKSIDHRHGJGUHQIQAKJGUIWQOP

RTHFBGJYIIUKJUDEREHGJFHGUTYHDSKALQORHJFUTHN

JFUTHTYJDGHFJGKIADBVHEGFYTH

“What about the box?” Kirsten said.

Redfield slid another photograph across the table to her. “I’ve put everything back in the envelope to avoid contaminating it further, but here is what it looks like.”

The photo showed a small cardboard box of the type that a pocketknife might come in. Lying next to the opened box, inside a plastic sandwich bag, was a human finger. A female finger, judging by the long, glue-on nail.

“It came in the bag,” Redfield said. “We didn’t open it.”

Kirsten shuddered. “And you’re sure it’s real?”

“It looks real to me,” Milton said.

Kirsten turned to the lawyer. “This is a body part from a murder victim. We have to call the police.”

“It was mailed to us,” he said, “and we have every right to evaluate it before we make a decision.”

Kirsten looked at Redfield. “Are you agreeing with this?”

He nodded. “For now.”

“Any idea what the code means?” she asked.

Redfield shook his head. “Not a clue.”