Gladyss of the Hunt (24 page)

“It would've been cheaper just to pay all blonde hookers to stay home this month,” Bernie said when the lieutenant finished his tally.

On the adjacent wall one of the team had pinned up photos of the latest crime scene as well as what must be printouts of the computer images of victim number six being drugged, strangled, and mutilated. Like Jane Hansen, number six was wearing a curly blonde wig; she wasn't really blonde either. Underneath the photos was another freaky poem the killer had posted on Miriam's web site:

         
They always cry:

                
“Why am I being strangled!

         
And I reply
,

                
“'cause I too was mangled.”

         
Why the knife

                
to my tender breasts?

         
'Cause my heart too

                
was plucked from chest,

         
Don't blame me

                
if you're slashed and torn!

         
I never wanted . . .

                
always hated being born!

I stared for a while at the poem trying to make sense of it. Then I looked at the jpegs and listened as Alex, Annie, Barry—in fact, everyone but Bernie—bounced theories against the facts of the latest murder to construct possible scenarios while they waited for the captain and the chief of detectives to arrive.

It turned out they had first learned of the homicide the previous night, when the pictures were uploaded to Miriam's web site at 9:38
p.m. The email address this time was
[email protected]
. Annie had looked up the name on Wikipedia. Apparently this Marshal was a medieval French knight who founded a chivalrous order—the Order of the Green Shield with the White Lady—devoted to protecting the honor of womankind. My guess is he was never married.

“This guy's on some kind of historical purity kick,” Alex said, recalling the earlier reference to Catherine of Alexandria, the patron saint of virginity.

Suddenly in came a short, fat man with a walrus mustache, wearing a tight, plaid suit. He mumbled his name and announced that the chief was unable to attend; he was there in his place. I confirmed later that none of us heard his name and no one dared ask him to repeat it. All I could focus on was the fact that his multiple chins bulged so low over his striped shirt collar that they completely hid the knot of his crassly colored tie. It seemed that the poorer their fashion sense, the higher up the ranks the department seemed to hoist them.

“So now he's killing at the rate of one per day.” He finally spoke to the entire group.

Our latest victim was a short, curvy brunette, another departure from the usual tall young blondes. Since I no longer fit the victim profile, I was a little concerned that I might be taken off the case. But inasmuch as the crime scene last night was even more gruesome than number five from the day before, the focus was elsewhere right now. Instead of stabbing the latest victim from a downward angle, like he'd done yesterday night, the killer ran his knife cleanly around her breasts until he sliced them right off, like in the Jane Hansen murder. Also, unlike Tabetha with the twist-top neck, this girl's head was still attached. The most troublesome departure from the pattern in this case was that this was the first victim who, according to the ME, had just
had
sex. It wasn't clear if she had been raped. There were no signs of a struggle, nor was any sperm present. Since Hansen's murder at the Ticonderoga Hotel, Bernie had said he suspected there was a second killer at work, but to everyone else that just seemed too unlikely. In addition to the particulars that all six murders had in common— tall blonde prostitutes who had been drugged, strangled, mutilated in the same bizarre way but not sexually violated—serial murders simply weren't that common. Nevertheless, this case was
just getting weirder.

“Any thoughts, Bern?” Annie finally asked. We were all a bit surprised by his silence.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “It's a contest.”

“What's a contest?”

“This whole thing . . . I mean, we had a murderer and he was doing these crazy-ass murders. Mary Lynn, Denise, then Nelly—all clearly hookers. There was something genuine about them. A little artsy with the body stacking and carved numbers—but original, real. Then suddenly the murders are getting all this press coverage and bam! These new murders start happening.”

“You mean the last three?” Alex asked.

“Not number five, Tabetha. That's the first guy again, responding to the Jane Hansen killer. But Jane and this new one, yeah, and you know what they are? They're bad imitations trying to pass themselves off as real, but they don't wash with me. The first group are genuine New York murders, your usual streetwalker whores in the last of the bona fide Times Square dives. That killer knows this landscape and its characters. But these new ones, no way. The guy is a fucking tourist posing as a native, loading down peglegs,”—he meant uploading jpegs—“putting makeup on the girls, overcompensating for his ignorance. He's trying to compete with the other guy.”

“You might be right, but if so, how can we use that to help us?” asked the walrus in the tacky suit.

“Frankly, I just wish we could keep this under wraps until we figure it out,” Bernie said.

“Bernie, you know we are obligated to warn all possible vics,” the lieutenant said.

If I'd had the courage to speak right then, I would've said that maybe we should be looking for a pair of ex-cons who had previously worked together. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that after spending the past week running down a whole list of suspects, we would've caught this by now.

“Not to discourage your theory, Bern,” said Barry, “but let's get back to this latest vic a minute. I'm still intrigued by the fact that he had sex with her . . .”

“There were no defensive wounds.”

“Maybe she was unconscious.”

“Or maybe it was consensual,” Alex said.

“With the murderer? You think number six knew him? This late in the series?” Annie shot him down.

“Maybe six was coming from another room and was just leaving,” Bernie said. “No one even saw her come into the hotel.”

“Why do you think he sometimes removes their heads and other times their breasts?” the second to the chief of detectives asked as he stared at one of the more gruesome photos.

“Well, there might be some kind of mother fixation involved,” Barry stated.

“The two girls who he's double mastectomied had relatively large breasts,” Alex pointed out.

“If it
is
the same killer,” Bernie said, stepping away from his hypothesis a minute, “It takes a lot of work to remove a head. It ain't like popping a champagne cork. He might be getting lazy.”

“And if he didn't even rent the room this last time,” Annie added. “he didn't know how long he might have before someone would just walk in.”

“What did CSU find?” the lieutenant asked, flipping through the forensic reports.

“Four clear prints and two partials, along with some hairs and fibers—but as before, nothing connects to any of the previous murder scenes,” Annie said, “We suspect that most if not all of what they gathered is from prior residents of each hotel.”

“And no signs of a struggle?” the chief's man asked.

“He drugs them all first,” Alex replied. “That's the way he works.”

“The tox screen hasn't come back, but the ME said he didn't think this one was drugged,” Annie said.

Bernie started coughing and though he tried to suppress it, it soon grew violent.

“You really got the World Trade hack,” the visiting detective said. “This kind of respiratory crap is getting to more and more of the cops who worked down there.”

“It's really just a cold,” Bernie said.

The door opened and the captain stepped inside.

“Well, if you need more cops, more anything, just tell your captain,” said the assistant to the Chief, overriding all the lieutenant's concerns about limited resources. “We got to get this solved fast.”

He thanked Bernie and the rest of us and was led out by the captain and the lieutenant. We walked back to the squad room, where Annie immediately got on the phone and Alex retreated to his desk.

“Do you think that went well?” I asked Bernie, since it was the first time I'd ever witnessed an inspection from the brass.

“Yeah, they just want to make sure we're not missing anything.”

“So we have to get an ID on the latest girl?” I asked.

“Funny you should say that,” Bernie said limping to his office. In the short time since I had been assigned here, I saw what a mess it had become. Boxes, bags of clothes, all kinds of clutter. Lying on the few square inches of clear desk space was a new-looking membership card for Rectangle Video, which was apparently in Union City, New Jersey. It had an ID number written on it but no name.

“It looks like the asshole grabbed her purse but dropped this at the scene.” Handing it to me, he said, “See what you can find out.” His phone rang and he took the call.

All the other squad room desks were occupied, so I plugged in a phone at Bernie's now vacant desk in the bullpen. Crime scene photos of all the victims were taped to the glass frame bordering the hallway. Before I could make my call, Alex came over with a magnifying glass and started inspecting the photos closely.

I was about to ask what he was looking for when he turned and volunteered, “They found some kind of adhesive on vic six's face.” He had just gotten the preliminary report.

“What would he—”

“That's what I'm trying to figure out,” he said, still staring into a large photo of the vic's pale white face.

I got on the phone to Rectangle Video and explained that I was an NYPD officer working on a case. Based on the membership card number I wanted to get the identity as well as the home address and phone number of the holder.

“Her name is Caty Duffy,” he said after I read him the membership number. Then he gave me her home number and address in Union City.

“Any other names on the account?”

“Yeah, one. Frank Duffy.”

“And when exactly was the account opened?” I asked, wondering if it had taken Caty a few years to fall from suburban grace to urban
prostitution.

“About three months ago. The last film borrowed was
The Two Towers
, just a few days ago. It's still out.”

When I thanked him, he suddenly grew suspicious and said, “You sound pretty young to be a police officer. Do you have proof of who you are?”

I considered telling him to call me back at Manhattan South Homicide, but hung up instead.

“If this is her Rectangle Video card, our vic is Caty Duffy,” I told Bernie. “She lives in Union City. I got her address and phone number too. Should we head out there?”

“Hell, no. Give the info to the Union City PD,” he said. “Have the morgue send them a photo of her and ask them to go to her house. See if anyone's there who can confirm her identity. Let them break it to the family. If it is her, we'll take it from there.”

As I followed his instructions, calling the morgue to fax the photo and then notifying the Jersey police, I was relieved that I wouldn't have to give her family the awful news. The Jersey detective asked for some details in case there might be a connection between our crimes and any of their recent unsolved murders. Then he asked me where to send the next of kin to ID the body. I gave him the morgue's number. He thanked me and said they'd send a car to the house.

Roughly forty minutes passed before a civilian call from Union City was directed to me. Figuring it was almost certainly our latest victim's next of, I asked Bernie if he would take it.

“You called the Jersey police?”

“Yeah.”

“So the worst is over,” he said. “Just confirm whatever the Jersey cops said and see if the next of kin works in the city. Save us a trip across the river.”

“What if he asks about her murder?”

“You don't know shit and the detectives are out detecting.”

He never failed to make me feel like a receptionist. “Just get his contact info and tell him we'll pay him a visit and answer his questions as soon as we can.”

“Okay,” I said and took a deep breath as I picked up the phone.

“My name is Frank Duffy,” a frantic male voice said. “She's been missing for the past twenty four hours and a Union City officer
just came to my door and . . . and told me my wife Caty was . . . murdered.” He started to weep just as Bernie began coughing in the background.