A Perfect Obsession

by Heather Graham

  Curious, Kieran hurried down to where he stood. He pointed.

  Time had nearly made a linen shroud—aged to a peculiar yellow-white color—part of the body it had covered. She could see, just below the shroud, that there seemed to be a strange dismemberment between the skull and neck and shoulders.

  “Head was removed,” he told her.

  “That’s not just...time causing decay of the body?” she asked.

  He shook his head, looking at the corpse. “No, I don’t believe so. We’ll discover soon enough. Oh, my dear! History is so amazing. When people died of tuberculosis, blood still sometimes showed on their mouths after death, and it was assumed that they had risen to feast on the living. There are a few other reasons for premature burial. I’ve seen some fantastic things! You are a scholar yourself. You must come by my office, and I can show you things that you can’t believe!”

  She would be glad to do so. “I’d love to see your office,” she assured him.

  He moved on, careful not to touch, peering closely here and there.

  Kieran wasn’t quite so happy to do so. In the farther reaches of the catacombs, where the shrouded dead by far outnumbered those in decaying coffins, she felt as if the weight of death was heavy. Empty eye sockets, only partially shielded by decaying shrouds, seemed to stare at her, as if she was trespassing where she should not be. In the shadows where the lights didn’t reach, the dead seemed as if they could move.

  Rise in their shrouds...

  And walk.

  “Kieran, if you will, please, help me make note here!” Shaw called.

  She hurried back to him, but she didn’t have to try to be his assistant much longer. Professor Aldous Digby, a tall, broad-shouldered, bald man of about fifty, arrived, and with him, Shaw’s grad students, introduced to Kieran as Allie Benoit, Joshua Harding and Sam Frick. Allie was an attractive young brunette with a prominent nose and large dark eyes, Joshua looked like he ought to be out on a surfboard with his sandy hair and deep tan, and Sam Frick was very dark and lean, a wiry young man with a great handshake.

  Kieran gave her notebook to Sam.

  “So, my illustrious young almost-colleagues!” John Shaw said. “Today, once more, we’re back to noting place and theories on time and condition. Allie, you and Sam with me. Joshua, if you will assist Professor Digby. In the next few days, we’ll be joined by other experts. Such a find cannot be jealously guarded by just a few, though, I do admit, I’m delighted to be the first here. We, will, however, rest assured, work tirelessly as there is so much to be done.”

  Kieran stepped back. The crypt had become oppressive.

  She had been eager to come.

  Now, she was eager to escape.

  “I will leave you experts to your work,” she said.

  Willoughby nodded. “Yes, of course, but my invitation was sincere. You must call me and come to my office. You’ll be fascinated by the history of this city.”

  She smiled, refraining from telling him that she was, at the least, well aware that New York City had a fascinating history.

  Escaping upstairs, she ran into Roger Gleason, who was just coming downstairs.

  “Had enough of those gleefully looking over the dead?” he asked her lightly.

  “It is an extraordinary find,” she told him.

  He nodded. “Yes, the find is fascinating. It’s a pity that poor Ms. Gilbert met her death to arrive down there, as well. I have to admit, I’m glad they’re getting to the study and removal of the bodies in the hidden crypt. No disrespect to the dead, but New York is also a living and vibrant city.”

  She was silent, musing his words, and he took her silence to heart.

  “I’m sorry. I guess you’re one of those New Yorkers horrified that a church has become a club.”

  “I think I’d be more horrified if the building were to be torn down,” she told him.

  “Exactly! I bought the thing when it so desperately needed the work done on the foundation, and I’ve poured a small fortune into it. You’d think some New Yorkers would be grateful for that fact. Ah, well, you’re leaving. You must come back. Come back when we’re open. We’re not an evil den of iniquity. It’s really quite nice. And, of course, I’m serious. If pondering the minds of sick New Yorkers fails to hold interest for you, you’re invited to work here anytime.”

  She thanked him and fled.

  Out on the streets, the odor of hot dogs and sausages cooking seemed to be strong, along with that of a few unwashed bodies and someone roasting chestnuts that had apparently burned.

  New York air had never smelled so good.

  She tried to reach Kevin; he didn’t answer.

  She saw that she had missed a call from Craig and one from Dr. Fuller. She tried Craig back and left him a message, and then called Dr. Fuller. It was Saturday, and they didn’t work Saturdays unless they were in the middle of an important case.

  Well, they were involved, and this was certainly an important case.

  “Kieran, how are you?” he asked. “Enjoying your Saturday?”

  “More or less,” she told him, and then added, “I was just down in the hidden crypt with Professor Shaw.”

  “Interesting that you should say that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I’ve just come across something that may or may not have anything to do with what we’re dealing with now. Want to stop by the office? No, no! What am I saying? The office? On a sunny afternoon? No, I’d love to meet you at the sushi restaurant by the park. Would that be okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Kieran told him.

  She hoped that by the time she walked the near mile to the sushi restaurant, she’d forget that she’d spent much of the morning with the long dead.

  * * *

  It was surely impossible to give assholes names worse than that of assholes.

  Somehow, Jeannette Gilbert’s step-uncle, Tobias Green, seemed to need something far worse.

  Muttering under his breath, Craig added a few more adjectives to the term.

  Craig and Mike weren’t in with Larry McBride and Tobias Green; they stood behind the one-way glass in the interview room and observed as Green answered every one of the detective’s questions with an angry roar.

  “I’m suing, I promise you. I’ve got an attorney already. You think my niece was famous? Wait until I finish with the NYPD! They’ll be worldwide infamous!” Green said. “Worldwide fucking infamous as fucking morons! I spoke with the police when Jeannette went missing. I spoke with them and told them they’d better find her.”

  “Mr. Green, it’s been brought to my attention that you didn’t get along at all with your niece,” McBride told him calmly.

  “That’s rags! That’s bullshit. That’s garbage! Didn’t she buy me and the wife a nice house? I fed that girl, I housed her and I cared for her. How dare you suggest that I’d hurt her in any way. I told you that she wouldn’t just disappear.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” McBride asked.

  “Moron! You have your notes. Same as it’s been every time I’ve been asked. Sunday at our house. She bought my wife a pretty scarf and brought it over.”

  “Neighbors said you were drunk and yelling,” McBride said. “You were screaming something about her owing you and your wife better presents than scarves.”

  “I had a few beers, and we were fooling around.” Green was a beefy man with graying dark hair and a stubble on his chin. To Craig, the man’s eyes appeared to be dark and beady, but he wondered if he was predisposed to dislike the man.

  He looked at Mike. “I don’t think he’s our murderer.”

  “Pity,” Mike said. “Looks like the kind of guy who could benefit from being locked up.”

  “Did she owe me?” Green roared. “Hell, yeah, she owed me! She wasn’t
my kid.”

  “I’m sure you made her well aware of that fact,” McBride said.

  “She owed us, yeah, she owed us. We kept her out of foster homes or an orphanage. You think it’s easy, feeding kids in this city?” Green exploded.

  “I still need to know more about your whereabouts, Mr. Green,” McBride said evenly.

  Green leaned forward. “What, are you stupid? You’re trying to accuse me of killing my niece?”

  “Step-niece, another mouth to feed,” McBride reminded him.

  “What a fucking idiot you are—and it will come out when I sue the shit out of the NYPD for failing to act when Jeannette might have been saved. That’s just it, smart guy. We do have a house. My wife did get a lousy scarf. Why the hell would I kill a girl who had the sense to know that she did have a debt to pay, even if she was stingy about it?”

  McBride rose and came out of the room, joining Craig and Mike.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe he’s our killer,” Craig said.

  “Because she was a meal ticket for him now?”

  “Because he’s a total slob,” Craig said. “Look at his clothing. He’s got food all over himself. His shirt is half in and half out. According to the profile, our killer is far more refined.”

  McBride looked in at Green and nodded. His phone buzzed and he took the call.

  At the same time, Craig felt his phone buzzing.

  It was Egan.

  And he was certain that he and McBride were learning the same information at the same time.

  “You and Mike get in here. You with McBride?”

  “Yes, we’re at his station house. What’s up?”

  “I’m afraid we might have another corpse on our hands.”

  “A girl has been found?”

  “No, a girl has gone missing.”

  Craig was silent a second. “Sir, this is New York. Our missing person reports flow in constantly. Is there a reason we suspect the worst?”

  “Yes, there’s a reason. She recently won a Beautify the City pageant. She was beautiful, Craig.” Egan was silent for a breath. “Perfect,” he added softly.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  “ACCORDING TO MARTHA STOUT—a PhD and a clinical psychologist who spent years teaching at Harvard, as you know—one in every twenty-five people is a sociopath,” Dr. Fuller said, eyeing his plate of sushi as he spoke. “We’ve all read this. Of course, this means that a person is all about themselves, and we have lived through the ‘me’ generation.” He offered Kieran a smile and then homed in perfectly on a piece of the restaurant’s signature lobster roll with his chopsticks. “Now, we all know such people do not necessarily become violent. In fact, thankfully, most just go to work every day, come home, eat dinner and watch television. But...well, you and I have both worked with the other kind. Anyway, I got it into my head today to start studying killers with corpse fetishes.”

  Kieran had still been staring at her Boston roll and had actually gotten a piece up and dipped in her soy sauce. She set it back down.

  “Ed Gein is one of the best known, but then, he was the inspiration for a great deal of fiction, including Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs,” Kieran said. “He, however, abused corpses. He made ashtrays and lamp shades and his own outfit of human skin. Ed Kemper killed because he wanted to see what it felt like. But he, too, made things out of corpses. Jeffrey Dahmer was a cannibal, as several serial killers through the ages have been.

  “And many have had tragically low IQ ratios,” Dr. Fuller said. He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “You have serial killers like Burke and Hare back in the day in Scotland. They wanted the bodies to sell for medical science. The past is tragic with such killing because of greed, and because of severe mental problems that don’t allow for someone to be totally self-absorbed, but nonviolent. But I have found a number of sadder cases that had to do with a deeper need.”

  “Necrophilia?” Kieran asked. “But Jeannette Gilbert wasn’t violated in death.”

  “No. There was a case of a Florida man who was in love with a dead woman—stole her corpse from the grave, ‘married’ it and lived with it for years and years before being caught. He kept preserving her. In Kansas, they caught a man who had a houseful of corpses. At first, it was women who were already dead that he dug up, but then they weren’t enough and he starting killing, as well. He kept them so that they could live in the house with him. He set them up every night at the dinner table so that he wouldn’t have to eat alone. He kept them beautifully. In fact, he studied embalming so that he could do so!”

  Kieran had taken a full semester on serial killers before graduating. She knew most of what they were talking about. She knew as well that Dr. Fuller was aware of her training—it was important in many of the cases they worked with when they were called in by law enforcement.

  “That was Louis Galleon,” she said. “He was lonely. Women turned him down. He convinced himself that the dead women were in love with him. And, when he began to kill, he apparently killed women who had turned down his advances, claiming, according to his statement to the prison psychiatrist, that he’d known they were just teasing him and really wanted to be with him for eternity.” She was quiet for a minute. “I do remember the description given by Dr. Jenkins, the state-appointed psychiatrist. ‘He was immaculate in his hygiene habits and careful in his dress and manner.’”

  Fuller nodded. He laid his printed page on the table between them and easily popped another bite of sushi into his mouth.

  “This is from five years ago—a similar case in New Jersey.”

  Kieran picked up the printed sheet; it was a copy of an article from a Jersey paper. She glanced it over and read aloud, “‘Miss Lawson’s body was found on the grass at Saint Steven’s Memorial Cemetery, gently laid out in a fine gown, hands arranged as if in prayer and beneath the cemetery’s famed statue of the crying angel.’”

  She looked over at Fuller.

  “Read on,” he said.

  Kieran did so. “‘She’d apparently been dead for several weeks. Attempts had been made to preserve the body with mortician’s wax and she’d been doused heavily, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, with an expensive perfume.’”

  Kieran kept reading silently and then looked up at Fuller.

  “No,” Dr. Fuller said softly, no doubt anticipating her silent question. “The killer was never caught. Now, this may mean something, and it may mean nothing.”

  “I think we should bring this to Craig right away,” Kieran said.

  Dr. Fuller nodded. “Yes, you must do that,” he said. “I have a tennis appointment with my wife this afternoon. I figured you’d be seeing your young man.” Fuller never referred to Craig as anything but “your young man.” He did so pleasantly, and he had an excellent rapport with the agencies with which they worked.

  He reached over and speared a piece of her Boston roll. “I see that you’re not eating this,” he told her. “Excellent roll. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not,” she murmured.

  He chewed—and then stopped midchew. He swallowed and told her, “Ah, Kieran. You’re looking at me as if I am one in the twenty-five. I assure you, I care deeply about people. But if I were to lose my appetite at every sad turn in my profession, well, I would starve.”

  Kieran smiled. “I guess I’m just not hungry,” she told him. She rose and told him, “Thank you. I’m going to try to get this to Craig right away. This man may have been active for years. He might have started very slowly. But now...”

  “He might be gearing up.” Dr. Fuller nodded at the article. “Take that to your young man. It just might be helpful.”

  Kieran left him finishing up her Boston roll.

  * * *

 
; Craig stood in the conference room that had been dedicated to the task force working on the Jeannette Gilbert case.

  A picture had been added to the board.

  It was that of Sadie Miller, beauty queen, resident of Brooklyn, recent design-school graduate and winner of the last beauty pageant she had entered.

  Craig had been through a number of pictures of the young woman; he’d chosen the one for the board because it wasn’t a glossy-magazine-style pose. It was of the young woman in a natural shot, caught in a smile as she turned to speak with a friend.

  He had just left his own office where he’d spoken to her best friend and roommate, Marie Livingston. Marie had been tearful—grateful, however, that the local police had spoken with her and that Sadie’s disappearance was being taken very seriously, even though it had only been a night since she had disappeared.

  “We had this deal,” Marie had told Craig. “Sadie’s dad died when she was ten and her mom just passed away two years ago. All our friends texted their parents when they were getting on a plane or going away, and so Sadie and I texted each other. I lost my folks recently, too, and I’m lucky, I have a brother and I keep in contact with him all the time, but Sadie is an only child. So, you see, if she was planning on staying out all night, she would have called or texted me. She didn’t. She hasn’t come home. I called our friends. None of them has seen her. I left last night at six to head to the theater district for dinner and a show with a cousin in from Nebraska. Sadie said that if she went out, it would just be down the street for dinner and that if anything major came up, she’d let me know.” Tears had filled Marie’s eyes. “I came home and Sadie wasn’t there. No text, no call. And I dozed on and off all night, waiting. No text and no call. Sadie just isn’t like that, Special Agent Frasier. She isn’t!”

  Now Sadie’s picture smiled at him from the board. Naturally, their first thought had been that she’d left, either willingly or not, with a boyfriend. And, yes, there was a young man she’d been interested in, but he’d recently been deployed. He was in the Middle East.