Central Park
Page 11
Paul is dead before his car falls into the Seine.
I remember
that on one day,
November 21, 2011,
out of pride, out of vanity, out of sheer blindness,
I killed my baby.
And I killed my husband.
12
Free Jazz
MUFFLED BY THE bathwater, the ringing of the telephone takes a while to reach Alice’s brain. Startled, she snaps out of her reverie. She grabs a towel, wraps herself in it, and reaches for her cell phone.
“Schafer,” she says.
“Alice? It’s me.”
“Seymour! Finally!”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, but I need information. Did you find anything?”
“I got your fingerprint. Nice work. I think it’s usable. I put Savignon on the case. He’s sending it to the lab now, and we should have the results in half an hour.”
“Okay. What else? The security cameras in the parking garage?”
“I went over to Franklin-Roosevelt and looked at their tapes, but you can’t see much. Your car entered the garage at eight twelve p.m. and came out again at twelve seventeen a.m.”
“Could you see me on the video?”
“No, not really…”
Goddamn it! “Was I alone when I came out? Was I driving?”
“It’s not clear. The camera picked up your license plate, but the inside of the car is too dark to see.”
“Shit, I don’t believe this! Have you tried manipulating the images?”
“Yeah, but it didn’t help. Their hardware is crap. And I’ll warn you now: I haven’t found anything from the airports. Without a warrant, it’s impossible to access their databases or their stored video. This would be a whole lot easier if we informed Taillandier about it.”
“Absolutely not. Did you talk to my friends?”
“Yeah, all three. Sounds like you had a lot to drink, Alice. They were worried about you. Malika and Karine offered to go with you, but you refused.”
“Please tell me you have something else, Seymour.”
“Yep, I saved the best for last. Are you alone?”
“Yes, why?”
“It’s about your friend Gabriel Keyne. Castelli did some checking on him. There is no trace, anywhere, of a jazz pianist with that name.”
“Listen, he’s not Ray Charles or Michel Legrand. He’s strictly small-time—”
“Come on, you know Castelli. He’s the best researcher in the division. If there had been anything to find, he would have found it. But there’s nothing. Nada! There are dozens of Gabriel Keynes, but none of them are musicians or in any way connected with jazz. And I haven’t even told you the best bit yet.”
Seymour let his phrase hang, as if waiting for a drumroll.
Spit it out, for God’s sake!
“You told me he claimed to have played at the Brown Sugar Club in Dublin last night?”
“That’s what he told me.”
“Well, it’s not true. Castelli called the owner of the club—they had a salsa-and-mambo night yesterday. The only guys onstage were members of a big Cuban orchestra who arrived that morning from Havana.”
Alice was stunned by this revelation. She was having trouble getting her head around it. Strangely, she caught herself thinking up excuses to defend Gabriel: Maybe he was using a stage name? Maybe he was part of a group? Maybe…
“I don’t know who this guy really is,” Seymour said. “I’m still digging. But until we discover his real identity, you should watch your back.”
She hung up and remained motionless for a few seconds. No, her theories were bullshit. The truth was, she’d been suckered. She had let her guard down, and Keyne had lied to her from the moment they first met.
But why?
She quickly dressed and shoved all her belongings into the bag. She could feel the fear spreading through her veins. Heart pounding, she walked downstairs, gun held out in front of her. “Keyne?” she shouted as she moved into the living room. Staying close to the walls, she stole furtively into the kitchen, her hand gripped tightly around the butt of the pistol. Nothing. The loft was empty.
In the middle of the table, next to the wine bottle, she found a note scrawled on the back of an envelope.
Alice,
I found the car, but the tank is nearly empty. I’m going out to fill it. I’ll meet you in the hookah bar across the street.
Gabriel
PS: I hope you like Moroccan pastries.
13
Hookah Bar
ALICE WENT HURTLING down the stairs and out onto the street. She had put her gun back in its holster and was carrying her satchel over one shoulder. The cold wind carried the scent of apricots, spices, and powdered sugar. She saw the Mustang parked out in front of the hookah bar; it had a cream-colored body, shiny chrome bumpers, blue racing stripes—a sleeping tiger ready to roar.
On her guard, she crossed the road and pushed open the door of the Nefertiti Bar.
The interior was an eclectic blend of Arabic and Western influences; scattered haphazardly throughout the room were low tables, overstuffed armchairs, and gold-embroidered cushions, but there were also shelves overflowing with books, an upright piano, an old bar made of zinc and polished oak, and even a dartboard straight from an English pub.
It had a pleasant, relaxed, early-afternoon atmosphere, full of autumn sunlight. Hipster college students with laptops cohabited harmoniously with the neighborhood’s elderly Egyptians and North Africans, who tranquilly pulled on their hookahs. The sweet fumes mingled with the scent of mint tea, creating an all-enveloping olfactory cocoon.
Sitting at a table, Gabriel had already started playing chess with a long-haired geek dressed in an improbable fluorescent-yellow spandex turtleneck and a blue down vest.
“Keyne, we have to talk.”
The young chess player looked up and complained in a squeaky voice, “Ma’am, you can see we’re in the middle of a—”
“Beat it, kid!” she barked, sweeping the chess pieces from the board.
Before he could react, she grabbed the student by his vest and lifted him off his chair. He looked scared. Quickly, he picked up the chess pieces and scurried off without another word.
“So, your bath doesn’t seem to have calmed you down any,” Gabriel remarked. “Maybe a delicious Moroccan pastry will do the trick. Apparently their honey-and-nut doughnuts are delicious. Unless you want rice pudding instead? Or a cup of tea?”
She calmly sat down opposite him, determined to confront him with his lies. “You know what would really make me happy, Keyne?”
Smiling, he shrugged. “Tell me. If it’s something I can do…”
“Well, it ought to be, with you being a pianist. You see that piano at the bar?”
He turned around and she noticed a look of apprehension flicker across his face.
“I would love it if you could play something for me,” Alice said. “I mean, it’s not every day that I get to have tea with a professional jazz pianist!”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. The other customers might not like it.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be ridiculous. They’d be thrilled! Everyone loves listening to a good song while they smoke their water pipes.”
Again Gabriel hedged. “It probably hasn’t been tuned…”
“Who cares? Come on, Keyne, play a few standards: ‘Autumn Leaves,’ ‘Blue Monk,’ ‘April in Paris’…or better still, play ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and dedicate it to me! You can’t refuse me that.”
Gabriel writhed in his chair, obviously uncomfortable. “Listen, I think—”
“Well, I think if you’re a jazz pianist, then I’m a nun!”
He rubbed his eyes and gave a long sigh of resignation. Sounding almost relieved, he stopped trying to deny it. “Okay, I admit it, I lied to you. But only about that.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that, Keyne? Or is Keyne even your real name?”
“Everything else is true, Alice! My name is Gabriel Keyne, I was in Dublin last night, and I woke up this morning handcuffed to you without any clue about how I’d gotten there.”
“So why lie about your job?”
He sighed again, aware that the next few minutes were not going to be easy. “Because I’m the same as you, Alice.”
She frowned. “The same as me?”
“Yeah. I’m a cop too.”
A heavy silence fell between them.
“You’re what?” Alice demanded after a few seconds.
“An FBI special agent assigned to the Boston bureau.”
“Stop bullshitting me!” she exploded.
“I’m not, I swear. I really was in Dublin last night at a club in Temple Bar, across the street from my hotel. I went there to relax and have a few drinks after work.”
“And what the hell were you doing in Ireland?”
“I’d gone there to meet one of my counterparts from the Garda Síochána.”
“Why?”
“We’re cooperating on an investigation.”
“What investigation?”
Gabriel took a sip of tea, as if to slow down the flood of questions and win himself some time. “We’re investigating a series of crimes,” he said finally.
“A serial killer?” she asked, trying to back him into a corner.
“Maybe,” he admitted, looking away.
Alice’s phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She looked at the screen—it was Seymour. She hesitated, unwilling to interrupt Keyne’s wave of revelations.
“You should answer that,” he advised her.
“What’s it to you?”
“It’s your cop friend, isn’t it? Aren’t you curious to find out who the fingerprints on the syringe belong to?”
She gave in. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Alice,” Seymour said, sounding distraught.
“Did you analyze the fingerprint?”
“Where did you get it, Alice?”
“From a syringe. I’ll explain later. Did you get a match or not?”
“Yes, we have a result, but…shit…”
“What?”
“According to the files, this fingerprint belongs to…”
“To who? Tell me!”
“To Erik Vaughn,” he replied tonelessly.
“Erik Vaughn.” The news hit Alice like a sucker punch.
“Yes, the man who tried to kill you, and—”
“I know who Erik Vaughn is, for fuck’s sake!”
She closed her eyes. For a moment, she felt shaky, but a restoring force prevented her from collapsing. “That’s impossible, Seymour,” she said calmly.
There was a sigh on the other end of the line. “I know it’s difficult to believe, but we checked and rechecked the results. There are more than thirty points of correspondence. We have to tell Taillandier now, Alice.”
“Just give me a few more hours. Please.”
“I can’t. Anything involving Vaughn is highly sensitive. You already got us in trouble once with this case.”
“How thoughtful of you to remind me.”
She glanced up at the old Pepsi-Cola clock on the wall behind the bar—1:15 p.m. “What time is it in Paris, seven fifteen? Just give me till midnight.”
Silence.
“Please, Seymour!”
“This is a really bad idea.”
“And keep digging with the fingerprint. I’m sure it’s not Vaughn.”
Another sigh. “And I’m sure Vaughn is in New York, Alice. I think he’s looking for you and he’s going to try to kill you.”
14
Two People
TINY MULTICOLORED PARTICLES danced in the light.
Rays of sunlight filtered through the half-open louvered wooden shutters. The hookah bar hummed with conversation. Strong aromas of orange, date, and hazelnut floated through the spacious room, where a scattered clientele pulled nonchalantly at hookahs or nibbled pastries.
Alice and Gabriel faced each other in silence. A young man approached their table to serve Gabriel more mint tea. He poured it Moroccan-style, lifting the teapot very high above the glasses so a head of foam formed on the surface of the tea.
Both elbows resting on the table, Gabriel sat with his chin on his hands. His face had grown harder. It was time for explanations. “So, let me guess: The fingerprint on the syringe belongs to Erik Vaughn?”
“How do you know his name?”
“He’s the one I was tracking in Ireland.”
Alice stared into his eyes. “Why in Ireland?”
“Long story. Ten days ago, the Boston FBI office was alerted by Maine State Police about an unusual murder committed in Cumberland County. I was sent to the crime scene with my partner, Special Agent Thomas Krieg.”
“Who was the victim?” Alice asked.
“Elizabeth Hardy, age thirty-one, a nurse working at Sebago Hospital. Found murdered at her home. Strangled—”
“With a pair of tights,” Alice guessed.
Keyne nodded.
Alice’s heart began to race, but she tried to channel her emotions. It might be the same MO as Vaughn’s, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was the same criminal.
“After the murder,” Keyne went on, “we checked the ViCAP database—without luck. I shouldn’t tell you this, but we have hackers capable of getting into the databases of European police computers: the ViCLAS in Germany, the SALVAC in France.”
“I hope you’re joking!”
“Don’t look so outraged—we do what we have to do. Anyway, that’s how I found out about the series of murders and attacks committed by Erik Vaughn in Paris from November 2010 to November 2011.”
“And you made the connection?”
“I arranged a meeting with your boss, the director of the Criminal Division.”
“Mathilde Taillandier?”
“I was supposed to meet her next week in Paris, but first I went to Ireland. I checked the international database and found another murder that had been committed eight months earlier in Dublin.”
“Same victim profile, same signature?”
“Mary McCarthy, age twenty-four, a student in her junior year at Trinity College. Found strangled with a pair of tights in her room on campus.”
“And you think it’s Vaughn?”
“That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“They lost track of Vaughn in Paris after you were attacked. Since then, he’s been like a ghost. The French police have made no progress at all on the case.”
“So?”
“Let me tell you what I think. Vaughn is a chameleon killer, capable of changing his identity whenever he feels threatened. I think he left Paris a long time ago, stopped over in Ireland for a while, and is now in the U.S.”
“All that just because you have two murders with apparently similar MOs?”
“They’re not similar—they’re exactly the same.”
“Oh, come on. Vaughn isn’t the first killer to strangle his victims with a pair of tights!”
“Don’t play dumb, Schafer. Vaughn killed each of those women with the previous victim’s hose. That’s what makes the signature his, as you already know.”
“And your first victim in Maine, what was she strangled with?”
“A pair of pink-and-white tights. The same tights the Irish student was wearing the day she died!”
“You’re jumping the gun. Your killer in Ireland or in the States is just a copycat. An accomplice. A straw man. Some sort of admirer who reproduces the crimes in minute detail.”
“You think so? Copycat killers are all over the movies and TV shows, but in fifteen years as a cop, I’ve never come across one. They don’t exist in reality.”
“Of course they do! The New York Zodiac killer, the Hance case—”
He lifted his hand up to interrupt her. “Those cases are thirty years old. They’re in all the criminology manuals.”
Alice would not let it drop.
Gabriel lost his temper. “Listen, I was going to spare you, Alice, but if you want irrefutable proof, I have it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You know what kind of tights the young Irish girl was strangled with?”
“Go on.”
“A pair of lace pregnancy tights, with a blue-green pattern. The pair you were wearing two years ago when Vaughn almost killed you.”
A silence. This revelation sent a chill down her spine. The police had never revealed that detail to the press. How could any copycat have known about those tights?
She massaged her temples. “Okay, let’s say it’s true. What’s your theory?”
“I think Vaughn wanted to take us on. That’s why he brought us together. And the fact that we found one of his prints certainly supports that theory. You, first of all, the French cop who knew him best after tracking him so relentlessly. You, whose unborn child he killed. You, with all your anger and your hatred for him. And then me: the FBI agent in charge of the investigation that identified him in the States. Two of us against him, determined to catch him but each with our own flaws and demons—two people who have suddenly gone from being the hunter to the hunted.”
Alice considered this possibility with a mixture of dread and excitement. There was something terrifying about the idea.
“Whether Vaughn is behind these killings or not, he must have a protégé or an accomplice,” she said. “Last night, you were in Dublin and I was in Paris. He had to get us both on a plane somehow, and the guy can’t be everywhere.”
“Agreed.”
Alice held her head in her hands. The case had taken an unexpected twist that, for the past few hours, had stirred up trauma and pain she had been wrestling with for years.
“One thing bothers me, Keyne. Why did you wait all this time to tell me who you are?”