A Killer Like Me (8 page)

“He worked twelve hours a day at a chemical plant, Mother, until he dropped dead. Cut him some slack.”

Saturday, July 28, 6:05
AM

The shrill ring of his cell phone jolted Murphy awake.

He cracked his eyelids and stared at the ceiling until the next ring. He was lying on his sofa. Still dressed. With a pounding headache. After an hour of listening to his mother’s ceaseless complaints and criticism, Murphy had gone home and killed half a bottle of Knob Creek.

The phone rang again.

Then someone knocked on his door.

Murphy felt his sphincter tighten. The first thing he thought of was the Public Integrity Bureau.

He hadn’t done anything wrong that he knew of, but like every working New Orleans cop, he lived in a perpetual state of anxiety about PIB—also known as the Rat Squad. If they wanted you, they could get you. Which is why half the cops in this city were retired in place, just coasting along, not making any waves or any arrests. That was the only sure way to stay out of trouble.

His cell phone shrieked again. The sound cut through his whiskey-addled brain like a knife. He had to change the ring, maybe set it to a song, something he liked.

Murphy found the phone on the coffee table under this month’s
National Geographic
. He must have tried to read before he passed out. He couldn’t remember. The caller ID showed Gaudet’s cell phone. Murphy and Gaudet’s squad had off this weekend. Their first in three weeks. Why would Gaudet call him at six o’clock in the morning on their day off?

He flipped open the phone. “Yeah.”

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Gaudet shouted in his ear.

The knock at the door came again.

“Somebody’s at the door. Hold on.” Murphy took the phone away from his ear. “Who is it?” he yelled.

The person at the door mumbled something.

Murphy put the phone back to his ear. “Give me a second.” Then he crawled off the sofa and stumbled across the den.

When he jerked the door open he found a shriveled old black lady staring up at him. She lived across the hall. Murphy had seen her a dozen times since he moved into the converted rooming house a year ago, following the fiasco with Kirsten, but he didn’t know her name. He had heard from another neighbor that the old woman had no family and lived on Social Security and cat food.

Six o’clock in the morning and she was already dressed for the day in a print dress with a lace shawl draped over her shoulders. She held a folded
Times-Picayune
in her hand. “Are you the detective in the newspaper?”

Oh, shit.

Murphy pressed the phone against his ear. “Juan, I’ve got to call you back.”

“Have you seen the newspaper, motherfucker?” his partner shouted. “You said she would keep your name—”

Murphy flipped the phone closed.

“Is it true?” the old lady said, holding up the newspaper. “About the serial killer?”

On the front page, above the fold, Murphy saw his own photograph pasted beside a long article. He pulled the newspaper from the old lady’s hand. “Excuse me a minute,” he said. Then he shut the door in her face.

As soon as he turned around his phone rang. It was Gaudet again. Murphy let the call go to voice mail.

He dropped onto his sofa and peeled off the front section. He tossed the rest of the newspaper onto the coffee table.
SERIAL KILLER STALKS CITY
, the headline screamed. The subhead read, “Police officials mum on details about killer who detective claims has murdered 8 women.”

The byline was Kirsten Sparks.

Holy shit. I’m screwed.

Murphy’s eyes scanned the four columns of the story. Then he flipped to the jump page and kept reading.

When he finished, he crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor. Then he squeezed his eyes closed and massaged his throbbing temples with his fingertips. This was bad, really bad.

The article was even worse than the headline. Every other sentence had his name in it.

“Detective Murphy said . . .”

“. . . according to Murphy”

“. . . said Murphy”

He picked up the story again and reread the lead paragraphs, hoping they weren’t as bad as they had seemed the first time. It was formatted like a wire story, meaning it would probably be picked up all over the country.

NEW ORLEANS
(
Times-Picayune
)—A serial killer is stalking the streets of the Crescent City, mutilating and murdering women. So far the killer’s body count stands at eight, according to the lead investigator.

Homicide Detective Sean Murphy said the same person is responsible for all eight killings, including a particularly grisly one just days ago in which an unidentified woman’s body was found dumped blocks from criminal district court. Her hands had been cut off and taken from the scene. So far, all of the victims have had links to prostitution, but that could change, according to Murphy.

“Serial killers sometimes evolve,” said Murphy, who worked on the state attorney general’s task force that captured the Houma-area serial killer a few years ago. “They often grow or mature, and sometimes with that growth comes a change in their victim profile.”

Murphy said he came forward with the information, despite strict department regulations prohibiting officers from having direct contact with the media, because he says the public needs to know about the danger the killer poses.

“Just because he’s killing prostitutes downtown doesn’t mean that’s all he’s going to kill,” Murphy said during a lengthy interview with the
Times-Picayune
. “Next time might be uptown, Lakeshore, or Algiers. No area is off-limits.”

Murphy provided the
Times-Picayune
with details about the eight homicides, though he declined to give specifics about the evidence he says proves they are linked.

What makes Murphy’s allegations so unusual is that no one else within the police department will confirm the existence of a suspected serial killer.

Police Chief Ralph Warren emphatically denied there is a serial killer operating in New Orleans. After being read Murphy’s list of suspected serial murders, the chief said, “Those cases are not connected. Those women were killed by different perpetrators.”

Asked if he knew anything about an active serial killer in the city, Mayor Ray Guidry said . . .

Murphy’s phone rang again. It was Gaudet. This time he answered.

“Don’t hang up!” Gaudet said.

“I’m here,” Murphy said.

“You said she wasn’t going to put your name in the story.”

“She promised.”

“And you believed her?”

“I had no reason not to,” Murphy said.

“Hell hath no fury . . .”

“You’re crazy if you think that’s what this is about.”

“You’re crazy if you don’t think that’s what this is about. This is payback for you screwing around on her.”

Murphy sagged against the cushions and let the newspaper fall to the floor. “What am I going to do?”

“Welcome to the Seventh District night watch.”

“I think it’s going to be worse than that,” Murphy said. He rubbed a hand across his face. “I can’t believe she did this to me.”

“I imagine that’s what she said when she found out you stuck your dick inside her best friend.”

A beep sounded in Murphy’s ear. He pulled the phone away and looked at the screen. The word
Restricted
flashed at him. The call was from a police-department number.

“That’s them,” he told Gaudet. “I have to go.”

“Good luck, brother.

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

“No problem,” Gaudet said.

Murphy looked at the phone’s display screen again, at the word
Restricted
flashing across it. Another beep sounded in the earpiece. He took a deep breath and pushed the green send button, then pressed the phone to his ear. “Murphy,” he said.

“Get your ass into the office right now,” Captain Donovan said. “And I mean right now. Don’t stop for anything. The assistant chief is on his way.”

Murphy didn’t answer.

“Did you hear me, Murphy?”

“I’m on the way.”

“And Murphy . . .”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring all your gear in.”

“What gear?”

“Everything you’ve been issued out of the Homicide Division—vest, radio, evidence kit, any files you have at home, case notes, everything. You won’t be needing them anymore.”

Murphy closed the phone. There was nothing else to say.

Homicide was the best job in the police department for a detective who liked to work. “We speak for the dead” is how one old murder cop had put it to Murphy on his first day in the unit.

After Murphy’s firing and subsequent reinstatement, it had taken him a year to finagle a transfer back to Homicide. He was pretty sure PIB wasn’t going to be satisfied with a disciplinary transfer. They would try to take his badge again. This time the cheese eaters wouldn’t make any mistakes that the Police Civil Service Board could use to overturn their decision.

This time his termination would be permanent.

Saturday, July 28, 7:30
AM

The killer grins as he stares at the morning newspaper lying on the breakfast table in his kitchen. He has read the front-page article three times. He can’t stop grinning. Someone has finally discovered him.

It is unfortunate that his discoverer is nothing more than a plain detective, some unimaginative flatfoot who, given enough pieces, finally put together the puzzle.

But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

It took the flatfoot long enough. Eight bodies, according to the paper. They got that wrong. They missed the first two. Partially, though, he has to blame himself for that. It was, after all, his fault the local constabulary failed to put those two together with the others. He overestimated their intelligence, or perhaps he underestimated his own cunning.

The killer stirs his coffee and gazes absently into the cup. In the new Sodom, as in the old, the harlots and sodomites see themselves as quite distinct and separate. It’s only in God’s eyes that their sameness is revealed. They are dizygotic twins, wallowing in their own apostasy. In order to be saved, both must die.

As the warm liquid from the first sip of coffee slides down his throat, he gazes again at the headline.

SERIAL KILLER STALKS CITY

How sensational. He wonders if the reporter who wrote the story also wrote the headline. Probably so, he thinks, because he detects the same alliterative prose in her lead sentence: “A serial killer is stalking the streets of the Crescent City, mutilating and murdering women.”

The story is good, if not completely accurate. He can hardly wait to hear more official reaction from the police department and city hall. Reading the article, it’s obvious the police chief is in denial about the presence of a wolf among his flock of sheep, a wolf masquerading as a lamb.

But what of this detective, this Sean Murphy, who defied his superiors and told the newspaper about the killer and his work? The flatfoot was at least clever enough to finally link the harlots’ deaths, though their connection could not have been more obvious, but he apparently was not clever enough to link those killings to the deaths of the two sodomites.

Maybe what this detective needs is a little push in the right direction. Maybe what this city needs is a message, a warning. After all, didn’t God warn Abraham that he was going to destroy Sodom before he rained brimstone and fire down upon it?

The cop is no Abraham, nor Lot, but maybe he can be useful.

At least he finally recognized my work.

The killer rises from the table and walks down the short hallway connecting the two rooms of his small apartment. His bedroom walls are lined with shelves, stacked with more than a hundred books, many on religion, many on . . . other topics of interest to him. As he brushes past them, he traces a hand over a hardcover edition of H. Montgomery Hyde’s
A History of Pornography
.

The killer sits down at a small writing desk wedged against the wall next to his bed. On the desk sits a Royal typewriter, circa the 1930s. On a shelf overlooking the desk stands a five-by-seven-inch frame holding a black-and-white photograph of a young woman with long dark hair and dark eyes. His mother in her early twenties, taken almost forty years ago.

The killer has decided to write a letter, but he hasn’t yet decided to whom he will send it—the police or the newspaper. After a moment’s thought, he realizes that the police may bury the letter. The newspaper will likely print it.

From a drawer beside his right knee, the killer pulls a pair of thin cotton gloves, the kind darkroom technicians once used to handle color enlarging paper, before everything went digital. He slips the gloves onto his hands, then pulls a plain sheet of twenty-pound paper from the center drawer and rolls it into the typewriter. For several seconds he holds his index fingers above the keys, mentally composing his letter, the first he has ever written about his work. Briefly, he considers the enormity of what he is about to do.

Writing to the police or to the newspaper, essentially the same thing, is fraught with danger. Look what happened to Kaczynski with his rambling manifesto. And to BTK after his taunting missives.

But I am doing the Lord’s work.

Still, he realizes that making his words public is a dangerous game.

Something tickles the back of his subconscious, something he has read. That phrase,
dangerous game
, where is it from? The word
game
certainly has more than one meaning. He bends over and picks up a dictionary from the floor beside his desk. He thumbs to the Gs. There it is.

game (noun) 1. a form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

His eyes glide down the text until he finds another definition.