The Anniversary Man (58 page)

 

Irving caught a squib in the New York Daily News:

Back of Richard Segretti there was no jacket, no list of priors, no childhood incidents of animal torture or arson, no six months in juvy. Segretti′s father was a logger, his mother a seamstress. Churchgoing people, committed to family values, dying within three years of one another, Segretti Senior from a stroke in the fall of ′99, his wife already dead from a heart attack in ′96. Richard Segretti had maintained the house precisely as it had been when his parents were alive, right down to his father′s reading glasses balanced on an opened copy of Serenade by James M.Cain on the nightstand beside his bed.

Irving went to the house after the FBI, crime scene analysis and forensics had done their work. He took Jeff Turner with him. The place was pristine, immaculate, spotless. Books were arranged alphabetically on the shelves, as were CDs and video cassettes. In the kitchen the canned goods were stacked by contents, by use-by date, all of them lined up with the labels facing outward. A cupboard in the bathroom contained eleven bars of unopened soap, eleven tubes of toothpaste, eleven packets of dental floss, eleven new toothbrushes. They were all the same brand, the brushes all the same color. Along the halls and in the front room pictures were hung so the upper edge of the frame was precisely six foot, one and a half inches from the floor.

Segretti′s height.

In one room they found photograph albums, boxes of keepsakes from each killing he had carried out, all of them bagged and labeled and ready to transport to the DA′s office in preparation for Segretti′s trial. They found Carol-Anne Stowell′s clothes, a box of theatrical make-up, a number of hairs that matched James Wolfe caught in a stick of white greasepaint. Other such things.

Irving and Turner drove back to New York in silence.

Turner had also seen Costello′s apartment in the days since Costello′s death. The racks of journals, the CDs, the video cassettes, the DVDs - all the same, alphabetically arranged, dust-free and pristine. The kitchen, the bathroom, the way the towels were folded, the way the shower curtain was hung, each plastic hoop the same distance apart along the rail above the bath.

The two homes could have been occupied by the same man.

The similarity between Costello and Segretti set Irving to thinking - thinking too long and too hard until it gave him a headache. One man went one way, another took a different route. Irving remembered a quote from a film he′d seen about Truman Capote, how Capote had spoken of the similarities between himself and the killer, Perry Smith: It was as if we grew up in the same house, and then one day I went out the front door and Perry went out the back. Something like that.

Irving caught himself counting things. Phone boxes. Girls with red hair.

Like there was some kind of safety in numbers.

After a while he stopped trying to make sense of it.

There was no sense to make.

 

The death of John Costello was investigated by an internal enquiry review. The NYPD Shooting Board questioned both Vernon Gifford and Ray Irving. Had Karen Langley been sufficiently well to appear she would have been called as an independent witness. The Board convened, interrogated, and adjudicated in her absence. The shooting of John Costello, though unfortunate, was deemed in policy. Gifford was neither suspended, reprimanded, nor given a one-eighty-one for excessive use of force.

John Costello′s funeral was held at the church of St Mary of the Divine Cross on Sunday, December 3rd. Irving attended, but Karen Langley was not permitted release from the hospital. Alongside Irving were Bryan Benedict, Leland Winter and Emma Scott from the City Herald. Irving took only Gifford, Hudson and Turner along, for he knew that John Costello had not been a man for friends and wide social circles. Such life as John Costello had lived beyond the Herald and his brief involvement with the Fourth Precinct, was represented by George Curtis and Rebecca Holzman from the Winterbourne Hotel group, both clearly shattered by John′s death. There were no family members to say words of remembrance, so Irving rose and spoke for them. Later he couldn′t remember what he′d said, but Gifford said it had been appropriate and meaningful, and Costello would have approved.

Segretti was bound over for trial by the state. His sister chose not to drive down from Saratoga Springs to visit with him, and she refused to give statements to the press.

Within a week it was as if neither John Costello nor Richard Segretti had ever lived. Each was relegated to the collective memory of New York, a memory that seemed caught somewhere in limbo, a memory filled with things that no-one hoped to recall, that everyone wished had never taken place. The Segretti trial would not begin for six months, perhaps a year, and by then everyone would have forgotten who he was.

It was while talking with Irving that Vernon Gifford said, ′He′ll spend the rest of his life knowing he didn′t win after all, that he wasn′t smarter than everyone else in the end.′

′Yes,′ Irving replied. ′And now he′ll have to face the McDuffs and Gacys and Arthur Shawcrosses of this world in the prison yard. They deserve each other, don′t you think?′

It was so true, so fitting. A beautiful irony.

 

As of the third week of December the body of Karl Roberts, ex-Seattle PD, one-time private investigator, had still not been found. There was insufficient manpower available to continue the search, but it was presumed that he must be dead, that Segretti had killed him, had assumed his identity for the purposes of getting close to Grant, and from there to Irving and Langley.

How had Grant come to hire him? How had Segretti passed himself off as Roberts and secured employment from a grieving parent? Grant told Irving how they′d met, and it had been too simple for words. Segretti had staked out a bar where Grant was known to drink every once in a while. He had waited until Grant was inside, had gone in with a photograph of a missing girl, asked the bartender some questions, acted insistent, aggressive almost, and Grant had swallowed the bait.

′Said he specialized in missing kids,′ Grant told Irving. ′Said he was ex-PD, had contacts across New York, New Jersey, Atlantic City, the entire eastern seaboard. Said he knew people who knew people. He came across as a very genuine guy, told me he had two daughters, grown-up now, away at college, and he empathized. I really felt he was a sincere and dedicated man. He said he would be happy to help, if only to use his contacts to get me some inside information on the case, you know? I can′t believe it . . . I just cannot believe that I sat in a bar buying drinks for the guy that murdered my daughter . . .′

Irving believed it; believed it without hesitation. He understood now, if he hadn′t already, that human beings were capable of pretty much anything.

 

That morning, December 19th, 2006, Ray Irving turned away from the clean light, away from the silhouette of St Raphael′s, and picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. He paused for a moment at the door, then closed it securely behind him and left the building. The gridlock had eased, and it was not too many minutes before he pulled up in the car park back of St Clare′s Hospital.

Karen Langley was in the lobby waiting for him, a weekend case at her feet. Her head was still bandaged and, although the swelling had diminished, the ghost of her injuries was visible around her eye, the line of her jaw. It had been the better part of a month, yet for both of them it felt as if no time had passed at all.

Irving had seen Karen Langley only the day before, but each time he visited he realized how differently he felt, how important her survival was to him, how devastated he would have been had she not made it through.

Such events defined mortality.

′Ray,′ she said.

He smiled, helped her up, took her case and walked her out to the car.

They reached his apartment before either of them had a chance to really say anything of significance, but once inside, standing in the small kitchen, he put his arms around her, held her close, and stayed silent while she cried.

Eventually she sat down. Irving made coffee, listened as she talked, her words falling over one another as if a month of disconnection from the world needed to be remedied in minutes.

And at last, after she′d said whatever she needed to say, she asked the big question: Why.

And Irving turned and went to her, sat beside her and took her hand.

He held it tight, shook his head slowly, and smiled a sad and gentle smile. ′I don′t know,′ he said quietly. ′And I don′t know that we′ll ever find out.′

Karen looked away for a moment, out through the small window into a New York morning, and then she turned back. ′I have to convince myself that I don′t need to know,′ she said.

For a while they were silent, and then Irving reached out and touched the side of her face.

′Stay,′ he whispered. ′Here. With me. Stay here, Karen.′

And Karen Langley closed her eyes, and she breathed deeply, and when she looked at Ray Irving there were tears in her eyes.

′We′re not supposed to be alone, are we?′ she asked, and there was something in the question that told him it was not meant to be answered.

And so he did not try.

Undoubtedly it would be comforting if the many serial killers who played a major role in the drama that unfolded in these pages were a product of my fevered imagination but, sadly for humanity, they were not.

Extensive research was undertaken to ensure that names, dates, times and locations were as accurate as possible. I also used a number of documented reports, choosing those that I believed to be the most reliable and trustworthy. But murderers are liars, and sometimes conflicting statements left precise details open to an element of doubt.

On the matter of my chosen location, New York, I must ask for the readers′ indulgence. I took a few liberties with minor geographical details purely for the purposes of the story. New Yorkers are understandably proud of their great city, truly one of the most remarkable in the Western world, and I hope that my dramatic license hasn′t offended.

RJE