American Devil (9 page)

‘Didn’t you hear me, Harper? Lisa Vincenti was fucking every guy in the department while you were out all night chasing Eric Romario. She got real lonely. Liked it every which way, I heard. Now she’s done with the department and has moved on to the courts.’

Harper’s two hands were fists now, and the anger was rising. He took a step forward. Then stopped. ‘I ain’t gonna rise to it.’

‘You don’t need to,’ Jarvis spat.

One of the three gorillas stepped forward, then another. They grabbed Harper at each elbow and shoulder and marched him down the alleyway. The third gorilla opened a long canvas bag that was sitting by the dumpster and took out a serious-looking sledgehammer. Harper was held fast as Jarvis moved in.

‘You know what this is, Harper?’

‘I know what it is and I know what you are - a fucking coward. You do this, Jarvis, and I’ll hunt you down.’

‘With what? You going to slap me with your big flat hands?’

‘I’ll hunt you down, Jarvis, and every one of these monkeys.’

‘You do that. I just want you to remember the last person you hit with those fists and what a stupid thing that was.’

‘Jarvis, this is way beyond necessary. I’m working the case because they need me. There’s a killer out there.’

‘Put his arm on the dumpster,’ called Jarvis.

Harper resisted and strained with all his strength as the three men held him and prised his arm from his side, but they were too strong. Against three of them he couldn’t do anything, not with his hands held firm.

They held his wrist down on the lid of the dumpster, so that his fist was lying ready to be mashed to pieces. Jarvis picked up the big carbon-steel sledgehammer. ‘Let this be a lesson you don’t forget.’

He pulled the long handle up over his head and then held it for a moment. ‘Ready?’ The hammer flew down at speed. Harper’s skill, learned from hours in the ring, wasn’t just in the extra pound per inch he could force down those four knuckles, it was in the ability to keep his eyes open when facing danger and to make split-second decisions.

As the hammer fell, the three gorillas closed their eyes and leaned away from the point of impact. It was the natural thing to do. The gorilla holding his wrist even moved his hand up Harper’s forearm.

It was a tiny miscalculation on their part, but enough. Harper watched the sledgehammer fall and twisted his wrist and hand about three inches to the right. It was enough to move out of the line of the hammerhead, which thudded with a massive shock into the steel dumpster, the loud bellow of sheet metal against carbon steel echoing both ways down the alley. The four assailants flinched in the aftermath and gave Harper enough of an opening. Harper pulled his left arm free. He already had his targets mapped out. Four blows. He could get four shots off in under two seconds. Trained to do it.

At his best, Harper could throw a punch at around ten metres per second. None of the four guys was more than a metre from him, which gave the first about a tenth of a second to see the straight left coming at him and parry or duck. He had barely clocked it when the full force of Harper’s 300 kilograms of pressure burst on to his jaw in the form of a clenched fist. His head flew back, his neck jolted and he was flat on his back, out cold.

The second guy had a little longer, but Harper turned with a right hand uppercut which hit the point of his jaw and lifted him to the tip of his toes.

The third guy was now backing off, which was a damn good thing because Harper hadn’t held back with the power and was pretty sure he’d broken bones in both his hands. He turned to Jarvis.

‘This time I’ll forgive you out of respect for your stupidity, but play a trick like that again and I’ll hurt you. Do you understand?’

‘Fuck you,’ said Jarvis, picking up the sledgehammer. It was about as stupid a move as he could’ve made. With both hands wielding the hammer, he was a sitting duck. Harper moved his torso out of the way, bounced back on to his front foot and gave Jarvis a repeat performance, this time with the full force of his elbow. Jarvis’s jaw shattered like glass for the second time and the sledgehammer clattered to the ground.

 

A
fter a four-hour sleep in the bunkhouse and a trip to the department doctor, Harper took his bruised but unbroken knuckles back up to the precinct house. His role in the investigation was to find a way into the case, which meant getting to know the killer, and he had some catching up to do. He wanted to see the crime scene for Mary-Jane’s murder and called Eddie Kasper at home. ‘You need to take me through the reports of victim number one. I know the basics - I’ve got the autopsy protocol right here. I know what he did to her, I just want to see how it happened. This first kill triggered off the next two, that’s my thinking.’

‘It’s six a.m., Harper. Don’t you sleep?’

‘We got a case to crack. Eddie, I expected a little more commitment from you of all people.’

‘Fuck that, I’m kinda busy on a different kind of commitment here. Can’t it wait?’

‘I’m back on the case, Eddie, and that means you’re mine. Now get over here.’

On the other end of the phone, a woman’s voice came on the line. ‘There’s only one woman in Eddie’s life and she’s lying next to him, so who the fuck are you?’

Eddie and Harper agreed to meet in the Upper East Side residential street where the first victim was found. Eddie drove up with a look of disapproval on his face. He jumped out of his car and threw the door shut.

‘It’s no good you smiling, Harper, you don’t have to face her. She’s not a woman you want to displease. Especially not when it comes to her conjugal rights.’

‘It was six a.m. You two were fast asleep.’

‘It don’t matter to her. I need to be right there on tap, should she have any such need.’

‘Well, she’s a lucky lady.’

‘That’s what I tell her. Shit, man, what the hell did you do to your hands?’

Harper started walking. ‘I got them caught in a door.’

‘Both of them? That’s a hell of a door.’

Harper kept Kasper walking towards the first crime scene - a four-bed apartment in a luxury building. Mary-Jane had been found dead in the hallway of her own home.

Harper opened the door to the apartment. The family had since moved out. They’d never move back, either. Their lives had been destroyed. Mrs Samuelson had come home, opened the door and seen her daughter, exposed and bloody on the floor. Harper held up a photograph of the scene.

‘She was right there, legs facing the door, head propped up on two pillows,’ Eddie said, pointing at the stained carpet.

‘He posed her for maximum shock and humiliation.’

‘Her mother’s not recovered,’ said Eddie. ‘I interviewed her twice. She’s bad, Harps.’

‘I imagine,’ said Harper, moving through the apartment. ‘How did he get in?’

‘He had a key or she let him in. No sign of forced entry.’

‘You mean you don’t know yet?’

‘He gets in and out without being seen. The only witness we got on this one is dead. I don’t think anyone’s come up with anything more yet.’

Harper walked through the beautifully furnished rooms. The trail of blood ran from the hall into the living room. The windows looked out across Fifth Avenue. ‘What do you think happened?’

Eddie shrugged. ‘He took her in here. We think he raped her on the couch. They found seminal fluid on the cushions. He wasn’t careful with this one. Left us his DNA, but so far no hits on CODIS and if he’s not on any DNA database then he might not have killed before.’

‘What next?’

‘He strangled her, went to the kitchen to find a knife, came back and took his trophy. After that, we think he sat staring at her for some time before he moved the body. Medical Examiner thinks she was lying in that spot in the living room for a good half an hour.’

Harper wandered around the room. ‘Two things are different here. I saw the report. The knife he used was from the rack in the kitchen, right?’ Eddie nodded. ‘He didn’t have a knife with him. The second thing that’s different is that he left his DNA and fibres all over this one. Amy and Grace were cleaned. I think he took their clothes to be sure, but he left Mary-Jane’s on the floor.’ Harper looked closely at the carpet. ‘Any tripod marks?’

‘No. But Mr Samuelson’s camcorder was missing.’

‘She didn’t struggle at all, did she? There’s not a thing out of place. My guess is that he controls them with fear and promises. He promises that he’ll let her go so she does what he wants. He either has them out cold or he controls them. I guess he felt safe with Mary-Jane because she was younger.’

‘Yeah, that’s too true.’

‘What I don’t get is why he goes for such high risk targets. It’s strange for a killer to start so confidently. He seems fearless. He takes big risks to kill the most difficult victims. Why? What’s so important about their wealth and privilege?’

‘Jealousy?’ said Kasper.

Harper shook his head. ‘It’s more than that.’ He had read the department reports and autopsy protocols on the first two murders and was convinced that the killer was an organized type of sociopath. He not only had a personal vendetta, he had a thing against society in general. He most likely chose these girls because their deaths caused maximum fear and maximum national heartbreak. Killers usually chose their victims from within their own social strata, but Harper couldn’t see it in this case. There was punishment going on here. And then the strange confessional poses and blossom. The poses that suggested the killer didn’t feel like he had the right to do what he’d done. He seemed to show remorse.

Harper spent an hour walking through each room, piecing together the last few minutes of Mary-Jane’s life. ‘All three kills show confidence and hatred,’ he told Eddie as they left. ‘There’s an increasing degree of overkill. In all cases, the killer posed the corpses and took a trophy, and he sprinkled cherry blossom like confetti over the first two. Why is that?’

‘He’s a fucking mental case. That’s the only explanation you ever gonna get from me.’

‘Yeah, he’s crazy, but he took time to shift each body to expose them. He wants to degrade them - to hide their faces and expose them as if he was suggesting that that was all they were worth. I know they were all wealthy, but if you want my opinion, I think this is personal. He sees something in these girls that no one else sees.’

 

A
couple of hours after walking the crime scene, Tom Harper left Eddie Kasper to talk to the profilers at the FBI’s New York field office. Later he arrived right on time for his appointment at One PP. He knocked on the fake mahogany door of the suite on the fifth floor. The little brass sign read
Dr Denise Levene, Ph.D.

On the wall hung a little certificate:
Dr Denise Levene, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, was honored as Distinguished Psychologist of the Year in 2003-4 for her pioneering contributions in cognitive behavioral psychotherapy.

A warm voice from inside the office shouted, ‘Come in.’ Harper did as he was told. He had to these days. He pushed the heavy door across the thick carpet and stepped inside.

There she was, Dr Denise Levene, sitting in a high-backed black leather chair in a white blouse, writing in her desk diary.

Harper stood in the entrance and waited for her to look up. She didn’t. It gave him a second or two to run his eyes over her. Blond hair. He hadn’t expected that. Young, too. She had a petite frame. Then she looked up and a pair of bright blue eyes held his gaze directly. She was pretty, for a shrink.

‘Welcome. Take a seat,’ she said.

Harper remained standing.

‘Take a seat,
please
,’ she said and smiled, all nice and accommodating.

‘Look, if you’re going to get all hooked on me, why don’t you just say something now and we can end this.’

She didn’t blink. Good on her.

‘Take a seat, Harper.’ She was forceful now.

He stood his ground, unsure how to play this one. Levene leaned back in her leather chair and chewed the end of her pen. ‘I get it. I’m blonde. I’m a woman. I’ve got letters after my name. You don’t know what to do with me, do you, Mr Harper?’

‘It’s Detective Harper,’ said Tom, flexing the muscles in his shoulders.

‘Not according to your file, cowboy. Not unless I agree you’re fit for duty. Officially, you’re still on suspension.’

Harper sighed. She was a smart-ass. Just what he needed. A curt little city girl with an answer for everything. ‘All right, let’s get this over with,’ he said, moving into the room and sitting reluctantly on a wide brown couch. He was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. After he’d hit Jarvis the first time, they had made him sit through sessions with some tight-faced therapist who responded to every remark with ‘Well, that’s good. So gooood.’ He’d ended up blaming the therapist for destroying his career. Too much thought can kill you as surely as too little.

Levene tipped further back in her chair. She studied Tom for a moment, unafraid of his negativity or of the silence. She was trying to get some angle. Tom felt her eyes on him and he lifted his head and stared back. She was confident. Dealt with his type before, maybe. Knew the road.

‘Let’s get some shit out of the way first,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to be here. Fine. I can read you like a book. You need to display your cynicism and negativity because you feel threatened in here. I understand that. But you don’t need to feel threatened. I’m here to help.’

‘I don’t feel threatened. You’re way off the mark.’

‘Not physically threatened, Detective. I mean emotionally threatened.’

‘Well, what do you expect? They didn’t teach us the moves to deal with an emotional attack at the academy.’