The Delilah Complex (23 page)

J
ordain, Perez and Butler were all hunched over the last set of shots Young had received. They were still waiting for all but a few enlargements they’d requested. But there were more than enough to work with. Or to be frustrated by. Everyone on the Delilah team was overworked, overtired and feeling the pressure of an investigation that had never gotten past go.

“Delilah is nothing if not consistent,” Perez said. “Look at this. Every one of these four guys has marks around their wrists and ankles at the same points. It’s almost as if he uses his own previous photos as a template to make sure that the restraints are exact.”

When Jordain went to sleep at night, he saw multiple images of these men, all four of them, as if his brain was a hall of mirrors. They went on into infinity, their ghostly figures screaming at him for not stopping this carnage.

He stood up and paced from one side of the room to the next, letting his eyes relax and scan the hundreds of photos that now entombed him. If he stopped focusing, perhaps he could pick up a pattern that they might have overlooked.

Just one more clue.

The two detectives plus Butler, as well as dozens of other cops, continuously mined the photos for something that might lead them to the discovery of the bodies or the apprehension of the killer.

All they had was the tattoo, but they still didn’t know what it meant. Perez had sent out copies of the small interlocking shapes to police departments across the country, as well as the FBI. If they could figure out what the mark signified, they would at least know what tied the men together.

“We need one fucking break,” Perez said as he popped the top on a can of soda. His back was killing him. They’d all been working sixteen- and eighteen-hour shifts for days, and he was overtired.

“We have to make the break ourselves. We can’t wait anymore,” Jordain said.

“What can we do that we haven’t done?”

“Find the fucking connection.” It was not like Jordain to raise his voice, but neither was it like him to be involved in a case as cold as this one. In his fifteen-year career with the police, he had never had a murder investigation with less to go on. “For Christ’s sake, we don’t even have the bodies. Why? What possible reason is there for the killer to be hiding these bodies from us and yet giving us the proof of his crimes?”

Perez had nothing to say.

“That’s a really good question, Noah,” Butler said.

“It’s only a good question if it gives up a good answer. Right now it’s just more bullshit.” He slammed his fist down on his desk.

Butler jumped.

“Listen, this is not doing any of us any good,” Perez said.

“What isn’t?” Jordain asked.

“Losing our tempers. Not sleeping. Looking at these damn pictures hour after hour when there is just nothing here.”

“Do we have anything new on Young?” Jordain asked as he broke stride in order to pour himself yet another cup of coffee.

“No. Nothing. We’ve had this tail on Young 24/7 since day one. And the only thing the woman has done is go to work, go to the gym, go visit some friend over on East End Avenue a few times, and go to Dr. Snow’s office with a wig on. Three Monday nights in a row. And one Saturday afternoon. If anyone knows anything, it’s your friend.”

Jordain glared at his partner. “We can’t get the reporter to reveal her sources. We can’t get the doctor to violate privilege. There’s nothing illegal about her going undercover to get a story or wearing a wig to protect her privacy at the clinic.”

“Then we aren’t going to get a break. It’s that simple. Something has got to give. One of these women has got to decide that she wants to help us more than she wants her own professional—”

Jordain held up his hand. “You’re right. We’re tired. Let’s not push it. Neither of these women is breaking any law. We have to assume that neither of them knows who the killer is, because if she did, and she is any kind of human being, she’d tell us. Even a seasoned reporter jonesing for a big story can’t just sit back and let more and more and more men be murdered. And that goes for Morgan, too. Privilege be damned.”

Noah was holding back a dozen emotions. He was furious with his partner for even suggesting Morgan might be withholding information, and he was guilty for wanting
to protect her if she was involved. He was frustrated that he didn’t know how to reach her emotionally and that he still cared about her. He was angry that the case was getting in the way of him having any kind of time with her, if she would even agree to see him again.

He was forty-one years old. He’d been trying to give up on the idea of finding his ideal for too long. He’d pretty much assumed the best he could hope for was that one day he’d get tired of looking. Then he knew he’d finally have a shot at a decent relationship. He’d almost gotten to that point when he’d met Morgan.

Morgan.

He knew better than to think he could ever fix what was wrong with anyone, but he was certain that he was what she needed. And he was even more certain that if Morgan had what she needed in a man, she could finally heal herself.

His cell phone rang. He pulled it off his belt, opened it, barked a hello and listened.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said as he shut the phone and headed to the door. “We might finally fucking have something. Fast.”

Perez wasn’t sure, but he thought his partner sounded frightened. He’d only heard his voice like that once before. The night that Morgan Snow got herself trapped in a madman’s apartment.

H
ad minutes passed? Or hours? My glance never left Paul Lessor’s face. I didn’t shift my head or avert my eyes from him, but in my peripheral vision I glimpsed shadows pass by in the hallway outside my door. I would know when Jordain came. If he came.

Now there was only silence out there and the distant ringing of a phone. Then more shadows.

And finally ten movements in one.

The door was thrown all the way open as a blur of figures rushed in, and before I could focus, the action stopped and everything stilled.

Jordain held Paul’s arms behind his back. Perez had a gun pulled on him. Three other uniformed cops took position around the room.

In normal time, the scene came back to life as Butler slapped a pair of stainless-steel bracelets on Paul’s wrists.

“Paul Lessor, you are under arrest,” Perez said, and proceeded to read him his rights.

Paul stared at me as he spit out one word over and over. “Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.”

Butler and a cop I didn’t recognize took him away.

Jordain walked over to me.

“Are you all right?”

I nodded, not yet trusting myself to speak. Once it was over, the terror had overwhelmed me. I had not allowed myself to think that the killer had been sitting in my office for the past thirty minutes, idly playing with a razor blade.

“We need to know what he told you,” Jordain said. “You think you can come down to the precinct?”

I tried to find the words. To calm myself. To let it sink in that there was no threat of danger anymore.

Jordain kneeled down next to me. He put his hands on my knees. The warmth of his flesh coming through my pants seared into my skin. It was the only thing I was aware of. The heat of his hands. I focused on my desk, on the silver-framed photograph of my daughter. Dulcie’s face swam in front of my eyes. What would have happened if Paul Lessor had hurt me? Worse. Killed me. Dulcie without me? She’d be all right. She had her father. But she’d be one of the lost girls. Motherless daughters who never quite understand why they never feel whole.

“Morgan?” Jordain’s voice pulled me back to the present.

“He is on Thorazine,” I blurted out.

“How do you know? He told you?” He was excited. “It’s important. It is one of the few pieces of information we had about the murdered men. At least one of them had been drugged with Thorazine.”

“He started to lactate. It’s one of the side effects of being on Thorazine for an extended period of time. He put his hand under his jacket and kept it there. When his jacket fell open and I saw the wet spot, I knew. I remembered. You’d said Thorazine was on that hair sample. And he kept talking about the men. The other men. That they deserved
this. And that I would be in danger if I interfered.” I was talking too fast. It didn’t matter, Jordain was following. His eyes were keeping me centered. I felt safe.

Even there, in that chaotic moment, I hated that false sense of security. It reminded me of his power over me. How he could make me talk about things I didn’t tell other people. How he made it seem as if he could keep the harm away.

“He’s got a driver’s license, address. Lives in the city.” Perez had come back into my office and was filling Jordain in. “I’m sending Reston and Douglas over there now.”

“Morgan, can you come downtown with us?” Jordain asked.

“I made a tape,” I suddenly remembered.

“You did? Why?”

I couldn’t remember for a second. Then my head cleared. “We always tape consultations. The potential patients are informed. It’s not unusual.”

When I stood up my legs were wobbly. The betrayal surprised me. Jordain put his arm out and it amazed me how easy it was to lean on him. I got my equilibrium back, let go of him and, straightening, walked across the room steadily on my own steam. The tape recorder was small but in full view on the lower shelf of the coffee table by the couch.

I shut off the machine, popped the tape out and handed it to Jordain. “I need it back. You can make a copy, can’t you?”

“Yes.” He practically snatched it out of my hand. I stared at his fingers. I remembered them playing piano. And playing me a few nights ago. I couldn’t make the connection between that man and this detective.

“What is going on in here?” Her voice was strident and
furious at the same time. Nina had never sounded so outraged. Perez and Jordain turned but she ignored them. Her anger was not directed at them. She glared at me. Whatever our attempt at reconciliation had accomplished the other night, it had been undone by having a contingent of policemen inside the Butterfield Institute taking a patient, even a potential patient, away in handcuffs.

P
erez and Jordain stared at the living room wall. In its way, it was eerily like their own wall at the precinct house. Lessor had papered it from one end to the other with every newspaper article about the Delilah murders. There was a design to the black-and-white clippings, graphically annotated with red markings: a map of a madman’s mind.

Jordain started at the right, Perez at the left. They walked from one end to the other, reading mostly to themselves until they found a section that Paul Lessor had underlined. Those they read out loud.

The two policemen who’d gotten there earlier showed the detectives what they had found in their search of the apartment.

“Did you find anything at all that could suggest where the bodies are?” Perez asked.

Both Reston and Douglas said they hadn’t, but they showed the detectives the medicine cabinet full of pill bottles, including Thorazine and half a dozen other antipsychotic drugs. Most of them were half full.

“He’s been on everything,” Perez said. “It’s a freaking drugstore in here.”

An hour later, the wall had been photographed and, piece by piece, the art director’s lair had been dismantled. Nothing had been found to lead them to their next destination in this search.

Often serial killers take souvenirs of their victims, but nothing in the apartment suggested that Paul had done this. There were no weapons. No restraints. There was no evidence of any blood on any of the man’s clothes, but they bagged all of his dirty laundry from the hamper in the bathroom so that the lab could go over it.

“This place is so small there’s nowhere he could hide anything, but just in case he brought those men here, let’s get the place printed.”

One of the backups went to work on that.

“I don’t like this guy as much as I thought I would,” Jordain said after two and a half hours.

“Why’s that?”

“Other than his obsession with the stories, there’s just nothing here.”

“I’m betting he’s got some other place somewhere. Out of the city. He’s a successful art director at a big publishing company. Probably makes more than enough for a weekender upstate or even in the Hamptons.”

“We’ll know that as soon as we get a court order for Lessor’s bank statements, mortgage papers, phone records. It sure would solve a lot of problems if I am wrong and you are right.”

“And this time I bet you wouldn’t even mind,” Perez said.

“Not one little bit.”

Jordain was sitting at Lessor’s desk. Everything was neatly put away. One thing that had struck him about the whole apartment was how uncluttered and organized it
was. Even the newspapers on the walls were carefully cut out. The underlining was all done in the same red ink.

He opened the maroon leather address book that sat in the right-hand corner of the maroon leather desk pad. Inside, page after page was filled in a studied and artful handwriting.

Nothing was out of order.

“Let’s get this cross-referenced,” he said to Douglas.

Butler had spent the past few days entering the information from each of the victims’ address books and PDAs into a computer. Cross-references might lead them to the killer. Or to someone who knew all four men. Or who might at least know what their connection was.

So far there were only a few matches in the books. A movie theater. The New York Department of Motor Vehicles. Bloomingdale’s. And a few restaurants, but that wasn’t all that unusual. They all lived in Manhattan, were all well off, were all professionals.

Maybe Lessor’s book would offer up something else.

Jordain had picked up the book and was about to bag it when he shook his head. “Jeezus…”

“What is it?” Perez spun around.

“We are so fucking stupid sometimes.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Butler. She answered on the first ring.

“Take off his goddamn shoes and socks and tell me if he’s got the mark on his foot.”