American Devil (25 page)

‘You shouldn’t joke.’

‘What else can I do? No time for feeling. I’ve got to cut to the chase here.’

‘Fire away. What you got?’

Harper gathered his thoughts. ‘Our killer is a compulsive sexual predator, right? We’ve just got the crime scene photos of all five women in front of us. Amy, Elizabeth and Jessica are posed with their genitals covered, but Grace and Mary-Jane are posed explicitly. What do you think? Anything might help.’

Denise thought for a moment. ‘It’s a difficult one to call, Tom. Research says that if a killer poses them graphically and hides or mutilates their faces, then it’s likely that he knows the victim. Hiding the face and exposing the genitals is an act of depersonalizing the victim and, some say, blaming her.’

‘What about the other type?’

‘Well, the other type suggests that he doesn’t know them, so they aren’t personal to him.’

‘Can I conclude from what you’re saying that this killer might have known Mary-Jane and Grace?’

‘Well, it’s possible.’

‘But that’s important. That’s real important. How would he know them?’

‘It’s possible, if - as you say - the killer is stalking these women, that they are women he knows and has become obsessed by. Sometimes killers start with people they know. Then they move on to the unknowns.’

‘Okay, Denise, that’s a great help. We need to have a look at that. What the hell kind of job might this guy have to meet this kind of woman?’

‘Might not be his job. Maybe he knows them socially?’

‘What, like this guy is an upper-class madman?’

‘I don’t know, Tom, but it could be anything, that’s all.’

‘We’ll follow it up.’

‘I’ll try to work up some ideas.’

Harper nodded. ‘Keep thinking, Denise. We’ve got until tomorrow. If he’s keeping to his two-day cycle, then we’re expecting another body to show up.’ He put the phone down, his head spinning.

‘What she say?’ said Kasper.

‘Maybe the killer knew the first three victims.’

‘Okay, that’s worth a look,’ said Kasper. ‘We need to cross-reference every place they come into contact with others and see if there’re any points of connection.’

‘Exactly. Let the teams working Mary-Jane, Grace and Amy know about this.’

Eddie shrugged. ‘Will do, Harps. And listen, we’ve already got news coming in from the teams. You want the headlines?’

‘Sure, run it.’

‘They found out that Elizabeth Seale was drinking in the Fullerton Lounge yesterday. We got a pretty firm memory from the bartender that she was talking to a man in the bar before she met a friend. The bartender said the guy hit on her so he didn’t know her. The guy drank a Black Russian, wore a black suit. He was also good-looking with a touch of grey hair. It could be him.’

‘Just like he did with Jessica Pascal. So let’s say Denise is right and he knew the first three, then ran out of victims or maybe he tried to date the next two and that changed things for him. He likes to interact with them. He gets a buzz out of it.’ Harper went across to the board. ‘Listen, Eddie, we need to know where he got to meet these three women, which might be where he’s scoping the next victims. We need to find out where he does his stalking.’

 

A
cross town, after the day shift, Tom met Denise at the Frick. He wasn’t sure whether she thought he was uncultured and needed an injection of art or whether she was keen to pick his brains about the job.

Walking the east side of Central Park in the fall dusk was a pleasure anyway. The wealth of New York had lined these avenues with grand houses, beautiful gardens and a peacefulness that you couldn’t often find in the city.

The Frick was a New York treasure. A beautiful house that was now a museum and art gallery. Harper stood around staring at the visitors, trying to guess at their lives. It was hard to know. Creative types, rich types, students - people who didn’t do nine to five or shift work to make ends meet.

Denise arrived in a yellow cab. She was dressed in a long black coat with her fair hair loose about her shoulders.

‘You not tried dyeing your hair like the rest of New York?’ asked Harper. He’d read that morning that New Yorkers had given up being blonde since news of the killings had come out. Everyone was turning brunette.

‘Mine’s natural and I like not being taken seriously.’

Harper laughed. ‘What’s the idea with the museum?’

‘I was thinking about things. Thinking about Williamson’s murder.’

‘I was going over it myself. It’s cruel.’

‘Then I remembered something. Something I want to show you.’

They talked low as they went into the museum. It was quiet and hushed inside the beautifully ornate rooms. It was obvious that Denise spent some of her spare time in the Frick, as she moved purposefully through the rooms to one in particular.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘See if you can spot it.’

Harper looked around the room. Lots of pictures hung closely together. Harper didn’t know what he was looking for, so he moved slowly from picture to picture. Denise watched him closely. She was comfortable with Harper. He had a rare commodity: he didn’t interfere, he let you be. It was just a quality he had and it was something she liked about him.

Suddenly, Harper shouted out, ‘Fuck!’

A guard took a step into the room and hushed him severely. Harper apologized. He turned to Denise. ‘Is this why you brought me here?’

She nodded and moved over to his shoulder. They stared together at the picture.

A classical figure, muscled and toned, tied to a tree, stripped naked except for a loincloth. His face was turned upward towards the sky, his eyes transfixed in pain and hope.

Harper’s eyes dropped down his body. The first arrow went through his neck, there were two in his chest and another in his shoulder. His stomach was peppered with three and then one in his thigh.

‘You think the guy who killed Williamson was an art connoisseur?’

‘Dunno,’ said Denise. ‘I count seven arrows and I don’t like coincidences.’

‘You think there’s a connection?’

‘Read the label.’

Harper read the title and sucked in his breath. Sebastian was the name the American Devil gave himself on the phone. ‘You think he was making a reference?’

‘I think that an arrow is a strange way to kill someone.’

‘Good work, Denise. But what does it mean? You think he’s into art?’

‘He killed Williamson as if he was a martyred saint, he posed Elizabeth Seale like a nude. Amy and Jessica might reference paintings we don’t recognize.’

‘It’s worth looking into,’ said Harper. ‘If your idea is right and he knew the first three girls better than Jessica and Amy, then this might be something. We need to check up on their interest in art.’

They stood there shoulder to shoulder, staring at the Renaissance images of the martyred saint.

‘What’s the significance of St Sebastian?’ said Harper after a while.

‘His motto is
Beauty constant under torture
. Our killer thinks he’s a martyr. He thinks he’s the one who suffers most of all.’

 

D
enise was woken at 6 a.m. by a persistent knocking at the door. She was dreaming of a prairie. A huge open prairie. Her father was visible but only at a distance. He was calling something that she couldn’t understand. As she squinted into the sunlight to discern what he was saying, his image zoomed with frightening suddenness and she could see that he was calling her name and sinking into the ground.

‘Denise, Denise, Denise.’

Her eyes opened. Her left arm moved out to her bedside cabinet and hit Daniel as she flicked the switch. A low orange glow lit a corner of the room. Daniel groaned and shrugged. Fahrenheit was lying flat out across the foot of the bed and hadn’t stirred. A great guard dog he’d turned out to be. Denise got up and stood in a vest and shorts, on the carpet. She could hear the voice at her door now. It was difficult to discern, but her name was being repeated in a loud whisper.

‘Denise, Denise, Denise.’

At her door, she took the red towelling robe and put it on. She wasn’t afraid for her safety. How could she be? Her man was asleep in the bedroom and her guard dog was slumbering beside him.

As she reached the narrow corridor that led from her living room to the apartment door, she thought she recognized the voice.

She relaxed. Who else would it be? The door opened and she looked down at the crouching figure of Tom Harper calling through the keyhole. Behind her, Fahrenheit appeared around the door of the bedroom, walked across and stared quizzically at Tom.

Tom saw Denise’s legs first, a glimpse of her smooth tanned thigh between the ruby of her gown. He looked up. Her hair was forward on her face, messy from sleep. She had a cross look on her face.

‘Are you having a crisis?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘You want to come in?’

‘Sure.’

Denise turned and walked to the kitchen, leaving Tom to stand and enter by himself. He watched her walk. She was more graceful without her heels, a softer, slightly longer stride - more confident. Then his eyes looked around her apartment. Her office was a temple of order, this was not - clothes and bags and shoes lay all over the room.

‘I’ve heard this happens to some therapists,’ she said, a coffee pot in one hand. ‘You know, guys getting fixated, calling after hours for a chat. I didn’t figure you for the type, but if you need me, you need me.’

‘I need you,’ said Tom, watching her closely. He liked her off-duty attitude.

Denise nodded, but decided not to follow it. ‘How did you get in?’ she asked. ‘And while you’re there, how did you know where I lived?’

Tom shrugged.

‘You’re a cop, right.’

He nodded.

‘So, you like Colombian or Ethiopian?’

‘I’ll leave the decision to you.’

‘Very wise, Detective. I care about my coffee.’

Tom watched her take a small steel scoop and extract some bright brown beans from a jar. She whizzed them in a grinder, then filled her espresso machine with the grind. She was on automatic the whole time. Her eyes were hardly open. In her living room, there was a collection of framed photographs on the sideboard. He picked one up. A lanky guy with a cheesy smile had his arm draped around her shoulder. He was in several of the pictures, but one particular photograph had a spot in the centre. It was a picture of a rugged-looking man with a little girl on his knee. She was smiling like a sunbeam and so was he.

‘I get all my beans from a specialist delicatessen in Little Italy. I recommend a visit,’ Denise called through. She appeared with the coffee. ‘I guess this isn’t social, so what’s up?’

‘I’ve been working through the night. This killer’s working a two-day cycle, which means that today he strikes again. Some poor blonde woke up this morning and she won’t go to sleep tonight.’

‘That’s quite a burden to carry.’

‘Erin Nash still won’t speak. Eddie saw her yesterday. She knew all about Elizabeth Seale. She knew he took her uterus. No one knew that. You read it?’

‘Yeah, course I did. Horrible. She said nothing?’

‘Not a thing. Says she just has a good source. If it’s one of my own team!’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘There just aren’t that many people who know the details. You know he posed Elizabeth like a painting. Like the painting on the wall of Jessica Pascal’s apartment. A nude. She looked beautiful from the front. He’d kept her all nice there, but behind, yeah, he’d gone to work.’

‘Calm down, Tom.’

‘Nate’s death has got to us all. After that picture in the Frick, I’ve been trying to track down any art links with the victims. Ten hours solid and nothing. It’s not art. Sorry. I’m wired.’

‘Yeah, me too.’

‘Listen, I’ve been thinking all night. Going over the fiasco at the Laker Building. The killer knew what we were up to, he knew it was a set-up and he set us up. Made fools of us. But he had Williamson’s home scoped already. He was seen parked in his road twice in the past week. I think he was going to kill Nate anyway.’

‘And now you’re the lead detective. You thinking that he’s after you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe he went for Nate because he thought he wasn’t high-profile enough.’

‘Yeah, I thought of that.’

‘I guess he wants to prove he’s the best. Or maybe he wants you all to know you’re not invulnerable.’

‘The one thing that keeps coming up in my mind is the fact that you knew how he’d react. You were able to predict his behaviour. No one else has got close to this guy, but you got him. I know he played us, but you got him to speak to us. How the hell did you do that?’

‘I trained in psychology; you know that.’

‘No, this was special. You were able to think like him, think how he felt. Where did you learn to think like a killer?’

Denise shuffled in her seat. ‘My research meant I spent time interviewing killers. I went to training sessions at Quantico. I picked it up.’

Harper looked at her suspiciously. ‘I don’t believe you. There’s more, isn’t there? I’ve been to those training sessions with the FBI and I couldn’t have predicted his behaviour like you did.’

‘It was a lucky shot.’

‘Bullshit.’ Tom looked into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry to call so early, but if we can’t track down how these women knew the killer then we need to work out where he stalks his victims. I want to do a reconstruction. I want to run through the murder at the Elizabeth Seale crime scene and I need you there. I need that talented head of yours. You might see something everyone else has missed. What do you think? Might help? Would you?’