Blonde Ice

by R. G. Belsky

  “Well, you did proposition me the last time I saw you,” I pointed out.

  “I was drunk.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m sober.”

  “So you don’t want to sleep with me?”

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  “Or marry me?”

  “Same answer. Sorry, Gil, I hope you understand.”

  “Sure,” I said. “A lot of women say no to me after they’ve sobered up.”

  She smiled sadly.

  “I think I need to take a hard look at myself before getting into any other kind of relationship,” she said. “I think this has to be about me too, not just Dale. I mean he seemed like the perfect guy. And, in some ways, he was. Decent, hardworking, smart, he took good care of himself by working out at the gym and eating healthy . . .”

  I looked down at the second chili dog in front of me. I’d already finished off the first one. Maybe I should pass on this one to impress her with my own healthy eating habits. Except I was still hungry. Of course, I could always get a salad instead. But it was only a fleeting thought, never a serious consideration. In the end, I picked up the second chili dog and devoured a big piece.

  We talked at some point about the stories I was working on. She was as baffled as I was about Melissa Ross.

  “I don’t know if I ever remember a case of a female serial killer like this one,” she said. “I mean there have been women who’ve killed a series of people. But generally those were for a specific reason. Like a black widow who killed her husbands for insurance money. Or a nurse who killed sick people in hospitals out of some kind of ‘Angel of Death’ obsession. But this is different. She’s killed two men—and seems intent on killing more—for no apparent reason other than they cheated on their wives with her. And they only did that when she came on to them, which for most men—as you know—is pretty hard to resist from a woman who looks like that. I just don’t get it. There doesn’t seem to be any real motive here for Melissa Ross to commit these murders.”

  “Didn’t you always tell me that one of the basics of law enforcement investigation is that there is always a motive for every murder?”

  “Maybe I was wrong about that.”

  “Or maybe we just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”

  “And then there’s the question of how she overpowered these men,” Susan said. “I think that’s crucial here. I mean this whole thing is the most unusual murder case I’ve ever seen.”

  She asked me about Houston too.

  “That’s so weird that she comes back in your life after all this time—and as a part of this story. And you had never heard anything from her until she walked into your office and asked you to find her missing husband?”

  I hesitated before answering. Looked down at my chili dog as if maybe it could tell me what to do next.

  “Well, that’s the official story,” I finally said to Susan.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It didn’t exactly happen that way.”

  “So how did it happen?”

  I told her the real story. How I’d tracked Houston down years ago and never told anyone—most notably the editors at the paper. I’d done that at the time for what I believed to be a noble reason. To let her live her new life as she wanted without having to explain her past as Houston. But now this seemingly good deed on my part had come back to haunt me, I said.

  “Jeez,” Susan said when I was finished.

  “Yeah, jeez,” I said.

  “And no one else knows this?”

  “I told my shrink. I’m trusting you not to tell anyone. It could cost me my job at the News if they found out I lied—and am still lying to them and our readers—about it.”

  She nodded.

  “Just out of curiosity, why did you just tell me?”

  “You’re my wife.”

  “Ex-wife.”

  “Maybe future wife.”

  I finished off the last of my chili dog.

  “I know we had some bad times at the end of our marriage. But you need to understand what I was going through back then. Basically, I was losing the two great loves of my life. I thought the News was going to fire me and not let me be a reporter anymore. And I was losing you too. I went a little crazy. Okay, a lot crazy. But there were a lot of good times between us too. You know that as well as I do. And there can be more in the future. I love you, Susan. I’ll always love you. You’re really the only woman in the world for me.”

  “Probably the only woman in the world who could put up with you,” she smiled.

  She reached over and took my hand. She squeezed it tightly.

  “You have to understand my situation, Gil. I need some time to figure things out. I don’t want to rush into anything too fast. That’s why you have to let me move at my own pace on this. There’s a part of me—a big part of me—that can’t imagine living my life without you either. But I don’t want to do that or commit to anything with you like marriage until I’m sure about my feelings.”

  “But you might?”

  “I might.”

  “I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but do you have any timetable on when you might make this decision?”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  A little while later, I walked her back to the courthouse in Foley Square where her office was located.

  “So that offer you made to me when you were drunk, to have sex with me—it’s definitely withdrawn?”

  “I told you I wasn’t ready for that right now.”

  “Just confirming.”

  Before heading back to the Daily News, I went back to the food cart guy and bought another chili dog.

  It sure seemed like a three-chili-dog kind of day.

  CHAPTER 20

  IT was two days later—a sunny spring afternoon—and I was sitting with my feet up on my desk in the newsroom, thinking about how I really needed to make it out to one of the Long Island or Jersey Shore beaches this summer—when the new message from Melissa Ross came to me.

  I’d just gotten back from an excruciating news meeting with Marilyn and Stacy and the other editors about where to go next with the story. The truth was we had kind of hit a wall. This happened on a lot of big stories. Everyone still wanted to read about it and we sure wanted to write about it, but no one was sure exactly how to do that. We’d done all the angles and sidebars and features to death by this point.

  And so all of us at the meeting—including myself, I must confess—had ended it by falling back on the old journalist safety net for an answer: “Maybe something will happen.”

  It did. I knew somehow from the minute I heard the click on my computer from a new email landing that it was from her. Maybe it was my reporter’s instinct or maybe it was just a coincidence that I was sitting there waiting for it at that moment. But sure enough, when I looked at the screen, I saw her name.

  I suppose a part of me had been hoping I’d never hear from her again. That she’d get caught, or realize the error of her ways and stop killing, or just disappear and never be heard from again. That had happened before with serial killers. They simply stopped and went away and no one ever knew what happened to them. But not Melissa Ross. No, she was back.

  I clicked open the email and read the note:

  It said:

  TO GIL MALLOY AND THE MEN OF NEW YORK CITY:

  Here’s another dumb blonde joke for you.

  Three prostitutes—a brunette, a redhead, and a blonde—see a guy in an alley shooting up heroin with a syringe. He offers them some of his heroin. Then he hands them the same dirty syringe he was using. “I should warn you though,” the guy says. “I have AIDS.”

  The brunette and the redhead quickly decline.

  The blonde takes the syringe from him though.

  “Are you crazy?” the brunette and the redhead say to her. “He said he has AIDS. You’ll catch it.”

  “It’s okay,” the blonde says, “I’ve got a condom with me.”


  I love to hear the lies. All of the lies men say about us. Goddamned men! Men are full of bravado and machismo and testosterone-filled bragging. But, in the end, it all disappears quite quickly. And all that’s left when that happens is a scared little boy.

  Don’t get me wrong. I love men. I love to flirt with them. I love to tease them. I love to get them aroused and full of lust and so excited they’d do almost anything to get what they want from me.

  And then I take it all away from them. Everything a man has. The bravado. The machismo. The testosterone-filled ego.

  Everything they have is stripped away . . . piece by piece.

  And, when it’s over, I take away the only thing they have left.

  Their life.

  And now, instead of another dumb blonde joke, I’ll end this with a little rhyme:

  Eeenie, meenie, miney, moe

  Time to catch another man by the toe

  If he hollers . . .

  Well, I sure won’t let him go.

  * * *

  There was a video attached to the email. Whatever it was, I knew it was going to be bad. But how bad? I clicked on the video and it began to play on my screen.

  I saw a car. The trunk was open, and the camera slowly moved closer to it. There was something inside the trunk. At first, it was hard to make out because the video had been shot at night. But finally I saw it was a man in the trunk. Bound and gagged and struggling in vain to get free. It was hard to make out his face in the darkness. Suddenly, the video jumped ahead to what seemed like several minutes later. The man in the trunk wasn’t struggling anymore. And I could see blood on his head and the front of his clothes. It looked like he was dead.

  She’d displayed him alive and as her captive.

  Then she’d cold-bloodedly killed him.

  The camera moved closer to the dead man in the trunk now, and his features became more visible.

  Finally it was so close that I could see his face clearly.

  And that’s when I really knew how truly evil and diabolical and brutal Melissa Ross was.

  Taking in the images I’d seen of Walter Issacs and Rick Faris like this had been tough enough. But they were just people in a story I was working on—I didn’t actually know either of them.

  This time it was different.

  I knew the dead man in the trunk.

  I’d just talked to him a few days earlier.

  Tim Hammacher.

  Part III

  NO ONE IS SAFE

  CHAPTER 21

  TIM Hammacher’s body was found in the trunk of his car the next morning.

  The car had been parked on the street outside city hall. A meter maid discovered it when she attempted to put a ticket on the windshield a little after 7 a.m. She noticed that the trunk was partially open, lifted it open, and saw the grisly remains of Hammacher inside.

  Just like Walter Isaacs and Rick Faris, he had been beaten and stabbed. He was tied up with heavy rope and there was a gag in his mouth. A stench filled the trunk because he had urinated all over himself—probably in terror. There was semen too, indicating he somehow had sex with his killer before she murdered him.

  The big difference between this and the other two murder victims was that police found no evidence Hammacher’s wife had hired Melissa Ross to follow or investigate him.

  The initial speculation was that he had been targeted because of who he was.

  A close confidant of the city’s top law enforcement official.

  Which scared the hell out of everyone, including me.

  “We believe all three killings were carried out by the same woman, Melissa Ross,” Wylie said at a hastily called press conference. “The circumstances of all these cases appear to be similar, and we are operating on the assumption that we have a serial killer on the loose. I can assure you that every effort possible is being made to apprehend the Ross woman, and we expect an arrest very soon.”

  For the first time since I’d seen him in action, Wylie looked rattled and unsure of himself. The loss of someone so close to him had clearly hurt him.

  He went through some details about Hammacher and the crime. Tim Hammacher was forty-four years old. He had a wife, Deborah, and three young sons—ranging in age from six to thirteen. He had worked for the city in various capacities for several years, before joining Wylie to work in the new administration four years earlier. Leaving work that night, Hammacher had told people in his office that he was driving home to New Jersey. No one knew exactly why he didn’t do that. Or how or why he met Melissa Ross. Or why he wound up dead in the trunk of his car in front of city hall.

  “Let me add a personal note here,” Wylie said, his voice breaking with emotion. “Tim was very close to me. He was my top aide at city hall. And he was my friend. The murder of any person is difficult to deal with, but it is especially traumatic when you knew the victim as well as I knew Tim. And the murder was so senseless. Tim Hammacher was a good man. I’ll miss him.”

  Reporters began shouting out questions.

  “Why did she pick Hammacher as her next victim?”

  “Do you think it had anything to do with his connection to you?”

  “Was Tim Hammacher having an extramarital affair?”

  Wylie just walked away from the podium, without answering any of them.

  * * *

  When I got back to the office, Zeena hailed me over to the receptionist’s desk. She said I had a ton of people trying to reach me. I told her to hold any further calls while I briefed Marilyn and Stacy on everything. Both of them asked many of the same questions that were asked at the press conference.

  “How do the police think that Hammacher wound up in that car trunk?” Marilyn asked.

  “The speculation is he picked Melissa Ross up someplace. Probably a club or a bar.”

  “Wouldn’t he recognize her from her picture being plastered all over the media?”

  “You would think so.”

  “Had Hammacher ever done this kind of thing with women before?”

  “Well, most people thought he was a devoted family man. But now I’m hearing he really thought of himself as a ladies’ man—and chased a lot of them. It just goes to show you that people can have secret lives—dark sides—that we know nothing about.”

  “How’s his wife holding up?”

  “About as well as you could expect for someone whose entire world just collapsed around them. Deborah Hammacher lost her husband, her kids lost their father, and everyone knows that he died after having sex with another woman.”

  “Do you think she had any idea he might be fooling around with other women?” Stacy asked.

  “She says no. But I’m not sure I believe her. I just figure a wife usually knows that kind of thing.”

  “Even if they don’t want to admit their suspicions, even to themselves,” Marilyn said.

  “Exactly. Maybe that’s the only way they can endure the pain and keep the marriage alive.”

  It was the lack of a direct connection to Melissa Ross that was the one big difference between Hammacher and the murders of Walter Issacs and Rick Faris.

  “There’s no possibility Hammacher’s wife might have hired Melissa Ross as a PI to investigate her husband’s infidelity?” Marilyn wanted to know.

  “No, the cops checked that out right away.”

  “Did she hire any private investigator?”

  “She says no.”

  “No one that might have told Melissa Ross about Hammacher?”

  “Not that the cops have been able to find.”

  “So Deborah Hammacher doesn’t know Melissa Ross. She never heard of Melissa Ross before she hit the news. And she never hired any PI—Melissa Ross or anyone else. That changes the pattern a bit. It really does suggest that the only reason Ross targeted Hammacher as her next victim was . . .”

  “He worked for Bob Wylie, the city’s top law enforcement official,” I said. “She wanted to send a message to us about how powerful and resourceful and downright scary sh
e really is. What better way than to knock off someone as high-profile as this? Wylie threw down the gauntlet to her at his last press conference when he made that dramatic personal vow to catch her before she killed anyone else. She not only killed someone else, she killed the person closest to Wylie. This is all some kind of game for her. A deadly game. And she’s making up all the rules.”

  Zeena opened the door and stuck her head in.

  “Malloy, there’s a call for you,” she said.

  “What part of ‘no calls whatsoever’ didn’t you understand?”

  “You’re going to want to take this one.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s your ex-wife. She says it’s important.”

  Zeena was right this time, of course. I did want to take this call. Zeena was always much better about the personal aspects of my life than the professional.

  “Hey,” Zeena suddenly asked me after I’d followed her outside Marilyn’s office to take the call from Susan, “what’s going on with the two of you anyway? Isn’t she the hotshot ADA who dumped you, broke your heart, and married some other guy?”

  “I prefer to say that we simply grew in different directions.”

  “So now you’re talking to her again?”

  “Yes, in my professional capacity,” I said.

  “Do you want to do the nasty with her again?”

  “No, I do not want to do the nasty with her,” I sighed. “And I wish you would just stay the hell out of my personal life. I don’t see how any of this is relevant to you or your job here, Zeena.”

  She smiled broadly.

  “I figured you did,” she said.

  * * *

  “I’ve been trying to reach you since I heard about the Hammacher murder and the new communication with you,” Susan said when she came on the line. “How come you didn’t call me back?”