by R.J. Ellory
As was always the case with such daytime visits, the fathers were working and it was left to the mothers to receive the bad news and answer the questions. Ashley Burch had told her folks that she was staying over with Lisa Briley; Lisa Briley had informed her parents that she′d be sleeping at Ashley′s. It was an old trick, but the old ones were the best ones. They had evidently dressed up like hookers, gone to EndZone, drank a skinful, and then . . . well, they′d collided with someone, and that someone proved to be the last person they′d ever see.
Lucas called for another female officer from the Ninth, had one stay with each of the respective mothers until the fathers were contacted and had returned home from work. He made his way over to EndZone, showed them pictures of the girls, went through the routine, leaned on the manager, made a noise about serving under-age girls. It went nowhere. The place had been heaving with people, hit capacity at sixteen hundred. It had been a good night.
Lucas left empty-handed.
Nothing happened for two days.
Eight p.m., evening of Wednesday June 14th, an anonymous caller asked to speak with the officer investigating the death of the two girls found on the previous Monday. Fortunately Lucas was at his desk. He took the call personally.
′I think my lover is a murderer,′ the caller told him.
′Who is this?′ he asked. ′Who am I speaking to?′
′Just listen,′ she said, ′or I′ll hang up.′
′I′m listening,′ Lucas replied, and motioned for one of his colleagues to hit the record button on the control box.
′What I′m trying to do is to ascertain whether or not the individual I know, who happens to be my lover, did in fact do this. He said he did. My name is Betsy.′
′Betsy?′ Lucas asked.
′Did I say Betsy? No, my name is Claudia.′
′This is very good of you,′ Lucas said. ′We really appreciate your help. Can you tell us the name of your lover?′
′No, I can′t do that.′
′Can you tell us anything at all, Claudia?′
′I can tell you he has curly brown hair and blue eyes. His Christian name is John, and he′s forty-one years old. I′ve found a duffel bag in his car full of bloody blankets and paper towels and his clothes.′
′Okay, okay, this is very good . . . can you tell us his name, Claudia?′
′He tells me he fired four shots,′ the caller went on, seemingly oblivious to Lucas′s question. ′He tells me he fired four shots. Two in one girl′s head and virtually blew her head away. One shot in the head and one shot in the chest of the other girl. He used a .25 caliber pistol. Does that jibe with what you′ve got?′
′Yes, yes it does . . . this is definitely of great assistance to us, Claudia . . . but we really need to know this man′s name. If you can give us his name I′m sure it will insure that no-one else is hurt—′
The line went dead.
An hour later Richard Lucas requested a print-out of every applicant for a .25 caliber gun in the last year. He ran a search on every known violent offender aged forty-one with curly brown hair and blue eyes who lived within the New York city limits.
Richard Lucas, with the very best intention in the world, instigated an operation that would consume the better part of three-hundred man hours over the subsequent three days.
All for nothing.
There were no leads that resulted in any forward progress.
The following day, standing by the water cooler on the ground floor of the New York City Herald building, John Costello glanced at The New York Times squib of June 13th regarding the Burch and Briley killings; the squib he had circled in red and underlined three times.
In his small office on the second floor he cut out the column and pinned it beside that of Mia Grant. He attached a Post-It beneath the column and wrote June 12 Clark, Bundy, Murray - Sunset Slayer and again added four question marks.
He stepped away, raised his hand to the back of his head and smoothed down his hair. He counted the words in each article, and then he counted them again.
He could feel the narrow scar beneath the hairline above his neck.
He could feel the quiet urgency of his own frightened heart.
SIX
Of Ashley Burch and Lisa Briley, Ray Irving knew nothing. They were Richard Lucas′s case - different precinct, different MO. Irving was pragmatic, methodical, prone to momentary flashes of genius, but these - as he aged - grew fewer and farther between.
Ray Irving was a detective by nature, intensely curious, ever-questioning, but familiar enough with the reality of the world within which he lived to understand that some things would always and forever remain unanswered. Perhaps unanswerable.
Nietzsche said that whoever fought monsters should see to it that in the process he did not himself become a monster. He said that when one looked into the abyss, the abyss would look right back.
Irving had walked the edges of the abyss for some years. His footsteps had been measured, even predictable, and though he had worn a track around the perimeter he nevertheless sensed that the perimeter was growing smaller. He neared the center of something with each new case. He recognized more of the madness with each killing, each instance of unmitigated brutality perpetrated by one human being against another. Sometimes, despite all he had witnessed, he found himself still staggered by the sheer inventiveness applied to the demise and destruction of identity and individual. And he had learned that irrationality could not be rationalized. As with addiction, the power of necessity was greater than any loyalty or agreement. Those who killed in anger were one thing; those who committed murder in the throes of passion were a specific breed. Those motivated by a desire to kill did not in fact exist: it was not desire, but compulsion. Compulsion was greater than love, than family, than any promise or vow made to oneself or another. Here were individuals who killed because they had to kill. It was not desire, it was obligation.
So much of his life he bore witness to events that opposed the natural order of things. Parents buried their children. People confessed, held out their bloody hands, and then walked free to kill again. Truth did not set men free. Legal technicalities were the route to salvation these days. Such things should never have been, but they were.
Ray Irving believed that he might go to his grave understanding some small measure of what he had seen, but he would never understand all of it. Understanding all of it was just not possible.
A month had passed since the death of Mia Grant. He had never known her, therefore did not miss her. Deborah Wiltshire, however, he did miss, and missed her in a different way than before. She had been dead for seven months, and though there were small reminders of her presence, her personality, left in Irving′s apartment - a ceramic hair straightener, a pair of flat-soled shoes with the right toe worn through - he perceived these things with a sense of balance and perspective that had come with time. At first he had been unable to move them because of what they represented; they had remained simply because they were all that was left of her. Now, with more than half a year gone, he saw these objects as constant reminders of the person she had been, the progress he himself had made, the quiet sense of closure they symbolized. Deborah Wiltshire, the unacknowledged love of his life, was gone. The only irony, strangely, was that she had not been murdered. Seemed to Irving - perhaps from some small and narrow strain of darkness he carried within himself, the shadow from the abyss that had gained entry even as he peered down into its depth - that the only fitting way for her to die would have been something such as that. He was a homicide detective, and if whoever or whatever was responsible for the karma of his life had been really thinking with the program, then they would have had the woman murdered. That would have been fitting. That would have been appropriate. But no - no such thing. Her life had been stolen away quietly, silently almost, a progressive deterioration of minutes, each one shorter than the next as she fought with something she couldn′t even see. And then she was extinguished. She did not gu
tter. She blew out. She did not disappear by imperceptible degrees, a water-color painting that faded with time. She simply vanished.
And Ray Irving was left with an emotion he could neither appreciate nor comprehend. It was neither loneliness nor self-pity. It was emptiness. Emptiness that could not be filled. He remembered something from Hemingway about losing things. If you lost things, whether good or bad, it left an emptiness. If it was a bad thing the emptiness filled up by itself; if it was a good thing you had to find something better or the emptiness would remain forever. Something like that. It made sense to Irving, though he could neither define nor imagine what might be better than Deborah Wiltshire.
The emptiness, if indeed that′s what it was, would remain.
He went about his business, he ate at Carnegie′s, he peered into the darkness and held a handkerchief to his face. He witnessed the way in which lives were randomly smashed. He asked many questions but received answers to only a few. He closed each day by standing at his apartment window and watching the world fall into silence.
Morning of July 29th the world came to find him. It came in colors, with cheerleaders and bandstands, with decorated floats and brass bands, with Sousa marches and baton twirlers. It came with the face of a clown. The Murray Hill end of East 39th and Third. Had it been east of Second, it would have fallen outside Irving′s jurisdiction, but no, the world wanted him to visit with James Wolfe.
James was a good kid who became a troubled young man. Hailed from the lower east side, edge of Vladeck Park. Had aspirations for architecture, design, other such things, but his father was a tough guy, a blue-collar sweat-and-cold-beer kind of guy who had worked on Piers 34 through 42 beneath the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, air from Wallabout Bay in his lungs for as long as he′d possessed the strength to haul and hammer. Dennis Wolfe was not an educated man, he had no certificates or qualifications. He once carried a man three quarters of a mile to a hospital and saved his life by stanching the blood that was rushing from a stomach wound with a handful of rags wrapped in a plastic bag. ′Figured I should do that,′ he told the attending triage nurse. ′Stuff a bunch of rags in there and they′re just gonna soak up the blood and let it keep on leaking, right? Wrap it in a plastic bag and it′s gonna act like a sealant . . . least that′s what I thought.′ Dennis Wolfe had guessed right. Acted awkward, embarrassed even, when they held a party for him a week later. Pier chief came down and shook his hand, gave him a little brass plaque with his name on. Dennis had prevented an industrial accident becoming an unlawful death lawsuit. He wrapped that plaque in newspaper and stuck it in the crawl space in the roof above the stairs, same place he put all the odds and ends he didn′t have a great deal of use for. Anyone in their right mind would′ve done the same was what he thought, and that′s what he believed. Didn′t mention it again.
Dennis Wolfe struggled with his son. Felt sure the kid wasn′t a faggot, but he just didn′t get the artistic thing. James′s mother, Alice, was a good woman, perhaps a little simple, but pragmatic and methodical. There was nothing artistic there. James had taken her to the Whitney Museum of American Art a couple of years before. She′d commented on the tea they′d been served in the small cafeteria outside. The tea was all she noticed, pretty much all she remembered. James had two sisters, both married, both young mothers, both tied in with a world that Dennis understood as their husbands worked on the Piers. There was a future in predictability. There was substance in tradition, repetition, doing what was known, not new things untried, untested. Architecture? Interior design? Such things had a place, for sure, but not in the Wolfe family. The Wolfes were workers, not dreamers. The Wolfes broke a sweat while the uptowners graced coffee bars and talked shit.
Dennis Wolfe came out of his break early to take a call in the Pier foreman′s office. Foreman had a mallet for a head, blunt features, blunter character. The call was brief and to the point. Dennis Wolfe showed no emotion, merely explained to the chief that there was a family matter he had to attend to. He′d make up the time - tomorrow, maybe the next day.
Three blocks from the car park Dennis Wolfe slowed for the lights, and then it kind of hit him: He wouldn′t have to worry whether his son was a faggot anymore, because his son was dead.
By the time Ray Irving reached the back of Wang Hi Lee Carnival & Firework Emporium the scene had been taped and cordoned. Duty uniforms had erected sawhorses and strung black-and-yellow around the building, giving a twenty-five foot perimeter within which to work on all sides. Lead CSA from the Mia Grant killing, Jeff Turner, was already there, and the expression on his face when he saw Irving made the detective uncomfortable.
′Indications he was strangled first, more than likely with a rope,′ Turner said. ′That′s my initial on COD. Positive ID hasn′t been done, but the kid had a wallet with a college pass inside. If it′s genuine then his name is James Wolfe.′
′Strangled first?′ Irving asked. ′And second?′
′Well, whoever did this pretty much broke his body in half.′
′Broke his body in half? What the hell does that mean?′ Irving asked as they ducked beneath the crime scene tape and headed toward the rear of the building. Everywhere hung the smell of sulfur and paint.
′Forced his body into a square trap in the floor, some kind of drain outlet or something. Three by one and a half feet, give or take, and it looks like rigor had already set in. If it had—′ Turner shook his head. ′If he was rigored then someone would have had to jump up and down on his stomach until the poor bastard folded in half. Otherwise there would have been no way to get him in there.′
Up ahead a uniform slid back the vast wooden warehouse door to permit entry.
′And he got his face painted,′ Turner said.
Irving slowed up and stopped. ′What?′
′His face . . . the kid got his face painted and someone put a red wig on him . . .′
′You′re kidding me.′
Turner took a deep breath and looked ahead. ′Come on. I′ll show you.′
SEVEN
The picture of James Wolfe, his face painted like Pennywise the Clown, his body awkwardly crammed into a hole in the concrete floor of the Wang Hi Lee Carnival & Firework Emporium, appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News. All it had taken was a police officer with alimony, car payments, an ex-wife or two, and a camera phone.
Shapes in the background - grotesque carousel horses, a jack-in-the-box eighteen feet high, the head of a Chinese dragon - and red banner headlines were paraded on the newsstands and carried on the subway and talked about over water coolers and backyard fences. The Clown Killer. Give it a name; always had to give it a name, because a thing wasn′t a thing until it had a name.
Morning of Monday, July 31st, Ray Irving stood quietly in the corridor opposite the door of his office. The corridor had a window overlooking the street; his office did not. Sufficient longevity to warrant a room to himself, insufficient to warrant daylight. He had pot plants - a fern of some description, a peace lily. He had a percolator, which filled the room with the bitter scent of dark Italian coffee when the mood took him. He had a desk, a phone, a filing cabinet, a chair with a sprung back to ease the tension he carried in his spine, and on the wall a cork board. Upon this were pinned mementoes of things; alongside crime scene pictures, scraps of paper upon which were scrawled barely legible phone numbers, was a recipe for almond muffins, a monochrome snapshot of himself and Deborah Wiltshire when he was younger and she was alive. His office was not dissimilar to his apartment. His office was inconspicuous, unadorned, impersonal. Had it been suggested to Irving that he get a life, perhaps he would have smiled and said A life? This is my life.
Mia Grant and James Wolfe were the unfortunates, among so many unfortunates. The U.S. was home to eighteen thousand murders a year, and New York was among the front runners as to a locale of choice. In essence New York was a crime scene, perhaps better now than in the eighties, but nevertheless from his perspective it appeared that the quie
t times - the times between the killings - were distant and seemingly disconnected. His life moved swiftly and smoothly from one primary to another.
The Mia Grant secondary was a small plot of earth beneath an overhang of trees back of a fence off a busy sidewalk; the primary was still unknown. The Wolfe primary was still being analyzed, but in a couple of days it would be nothing more than a hole in the floor in back of some warehouse owned by a Chinese firework company. That was all that was left. The body would be buried, cremated, whatever the family wished, and then the rest of the world would forget. The family would try to forget, feel guilty for attempting such a thing.
Irving sighed. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then turned when he heard the phone ringing in his office.
′Irving.′
′Ray? Got a reporter from the City Herald.′
Irving sat down. ′Go for it,′ he said resignedly.
′Detective Irving?′
′Speaking.′
′Hi there . . . thanks for speaking to me. My name′s Karen Langley, calling from the New York City Herald. Had a couple of questions I thought you might be able to answer.′
′Shoot.′
′Mia Grant.′
′What about her?′
′Wondered if there had been anything from the coroner on the weapon used.′
′We have chosen not to release that information,′ Irving said.
′So you do know what weapon was used?′
′Of course we know what weapon was used, Ms Langley.′
′But you′re not saying?′
′I just said that.′
Karen Langley paused. ′The teenage girls isn′t your case, right?′
′Teenage girls?′ Irving asked.
′The two girls found in the East River Park, fifteen and sixteen years old. Gunshot victims. I have their names here—′
