The Killer in My Eyes. By G. Faletti

by Giorgio Faletti

  Or there he was.

  Thinking about that now, he felt as embarrassed as he had that morning. But Lysa’s face had borne no trace of the previous evening’s conversation.

  Only a smile.

  ‘Good morning, Jordan. How are your eye and nose? I can see them, but how do they feel?’

  ‘I’m hardly aware of them.’

  ‘Good. Want a coffee?’

  He had sat down at the table, which was laid for two. ‘This is quite a privilege. What have I done to deserve it?’

  ‘It’s the first day of my first time in New York. I also deserve it. How do you like your eggs?’

  ‘Do I get eggs, too?’

  ‘Sure. What kind of bed and breakfast would this be without eggs?’

  Lysa had brought the plates to the table and they had eaten breakfast almost in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts. But then Lysa had put an end to that little moment of peace and opened the door to the outside world.

  ‘They just talked about your nephew on TV.’

  ‘I can imagine. This case is going to create quite a stir.’

  ‘And what will you do now?’

  ‘Before anything else, find a place to stay. I don’t want to go to my brother in Gracie Mansion. Everyone would be watching me. I prefer to keep as low a profile as possible. There’s a hotel on Thirty-Eighth that—’

  ‘Listen, I have a proposition. Seeing as how my husband isn’t a problem any more . . .’

  It was like a punch to the stomach. Jordan had hoped his reaction didn’t show on his face.

  Lysa had continued as if everything was normal. ‘I’ve only just arrived in the city and I want to do a bit of sightseeing before I start looking for a job. In other words, I’ll be out most of the time. As for you, this business will surely be over sooner or later and you’ll be free to go. In the meantime, you can stay here, if you want.’

  She paused and tilted her head to one side, with an amused, almost defiant gleam in her golden eyes.

  ‘Unless that’s a problem for you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Jordan had replied, a bit too hastily, and immediately felt like a fool.

  Lysa had stood up and started clearing the table. ‘Time to get going.’

  ‘Want a hand?’

  ‘God, no. I think you have more important things to do.’

  Jordan had looked at his watch. ‘Yes. I’ll take a quick shower and then be on my way.’ He had started for his room but Lysa’s voice had stopped him.

  ‘Jordan . . .’

  He waited.

  ‘They talked about you in that news item I saw on TV. They said you were one of the best police officers New York has ever had.’

  ‘They say all kinds of things.’

  ‘They also said why you’re not a police officer any more.’

  ‘. . . tonight by her bodyguard.’

  Burroni’s voice brought him back to that rain-washed car and the streetlights and the reflections on the wet asphalt.

  ‘Sorry, James, I was miles away. Do you mind repeating that?’

  ‘I said she was discovered tonight by her bodyguard. He called Headquarters and I was the one who spoke to him. From what he told me, especially about the way the body was arranged, this could be it.’

  ‘Does my brother know?’

  ‘Of course. He was told immediately, just like he asked. He said to inform him if things really are the way they look.’

  ‘We should know soon enough.’

  They said nothing more for the rest of the ride, each deep in thoughts they would have preferred to leave at home.

  Jordan knew the Stuart Building, a slightly sinister edifice, some sixty storeys high, adorned on its upper levels with gargoyles reminiscent of those on the Chrysler Building. It occupied the entire block between 92nd and 93rd Streets on Central Park West, looking out on Central Park and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. The name Stuart meant money, real money, lots of it. Old Arnold J. Stuart had ruthlessly amassed a huge fortune from steel in the days of the Fricks and the Carnegies. Subsequently the family’s interests had expanded into almost every field. When Chandelle Stuart’s parents had died in quick succession a few years earlier, she had found herself sole heir to a vast fortune.

  When they got to the location, Burroni parked the car immediately behind the Crime Scene team’s van. He switched off the engine but made no move to get out.

  ‘Jordan, there’s something I think you should know, especially after what you told me today.’

  Jordan waited in silence. He didn’t know what Burroni was about to tell him, but he sensed it was something that wasn’t easy for him to say.

  ‘You know, about this Internal Affairs business. I did take that money. I needed it. My son Kenny has—’

  Jordan raised his hand. ‘It’s all right, James. I guess things have been hard for you, too.’

  They looked at each other for a moment, their faces made spectral by the orange light of the streetlamps and the reflections of the raindrops on the car windows.

  Then Jordan said, ‘Come on, let’s take a look at this shit.’

  They opened their doors almost simultaneously, got out, and ran towards the entrance of the building in the rain.

  CHAPTER 19

  The first thing the two men saw as they entered the apartment was the motionless female figure sitting by the piano – a shiny black Steinway grand that must have cost a fortune. She was sitting on a bar stool high enough to support her back against the curve of the instrument. Her elbows rested on the lacquered top, her hands dangling over the edge. Her face was turned towards the keyboard, as if she was listening spellbound to music only she could hear.

  Her black dress was low-cut but sober, and they couldn’t make out her features, which were concealed by the long smooth hair that covered her face. Her legs were crossed, giving a glimpse of her bare thighs, and from her knees a shiny substance had run down her calf and smeared the material of her stockings.

  Without realizing it, Jordan found himself speaking in a lower voice than he would normally have used, as if the malign spell of that silent concert was not to be broken. ‘Just like Lucy with Schroeder.’

  ‘Who’s Schroeder?’

  ‘Another character from Peanuts, a musical prodigy who’s crazy about Beethoven. Charles Schulz always draws him sitting at his toy piano. Lucy’s in love with him and she always sits in this position when she listens to him playing.’

  They slowly approached the body. Burroni pointed out that the elbows had been stuck to the surface of the piano with a mass of glue. Glue had also been used to stick her dress to the back of the stool. The crossed legs had been kept in position in the same way, but so much adhesive had been used that it had dripped down.

  ‘She’s glued, just like your nephew. But this time our cartoonist really went to town.’

  ‘Who’d like to bet it’s the same brand? Ice Glue.’

  Jordan put on the latex gloves that Burroni handed him, then lifted the victim’s hair to uncover her face.

  ‘Holy Christ.’

  The victim’s eyes, staring at the keyboard, were held open by the same glue that her killer had used on the rest of the body. Jordan pointed out the bruises around her neck.

  ‘She was strangled, too.’

  Jordan let the hair go and it fell like a curtain over those unnaturally staring eyes. He walked to the other side of the piano to see the body from a different angle. What he saw brought him up short. The lid of the piano was raised, and on the little flap where the music usually rested was a white sheet of paper with some handwritten words on it:

  It was a dark and stormy night . . .

  A chill went through him. He knew all too well what those words meant. It was a famous line from Peanuts but, at the same time, it was a death sentence for somebody. Burroni came up behind him and looked over his shoulder.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’

  ‘It’s another warning. If we don’t find this son of
a bitch in a hurry, we’ll soon be dealing with another poor dead bastard got up to look like Snoopy.’

  Jordan walked away from the piano and at last took a look around. When the elevator doors had opened, he and Burroni had been drawn immediately to the chilling spectacle of the corpse. Now he was able to get a better idea of their surroundings. The apartment was furnished, at least the part of it they could see, in a minimalist style, with furniture in wenge and anodized aluminium, and couches and drapes in pale colours ranging from sand to tobacco. Everything around them spoke of wealth. There were paintings and art objects that told the long history of the Stuart family. The wall to his right was entirely occupied by a painting, and there was nothing to suggest that it wasn’t an original. It was a preparatory study for Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, the same size as the finished painting in the Louvre.

  The presence here of that particular painting, it struck Jordan, was like an ironic twist of fate.

  Géricault. Jerry Ko.

  Two painters with similar-sounding names, their work united by the same violent despair. Each in his way had depicted life as a hopeless journey towards death. And now Chandelle Stuart’s soul was also adrift on that fragile raft.

  As he walked towards the painting, he noticed a couple of things he had not spotted before. Strewn on the floor near the elevator were fragments of a vase that seemed to have been thrown against the door, to judge by the marks on the panelling. And around the living room were torn shreds of what appeared to have been an item of clothing.

  Just then, the Medical Examiner appeared from beyond the wall occupied by the painting. When he came level with Jordan and Burroni, he replied immediately to the question he read in their eyes.

  ‘For now, I can’t tell you very much, except that the victim was strangled and that death probably occurred some time between nine and eleven.’

  Jordan pointed to the fragments near the elevator and the pieces of material on the floor. ‘These would seem to suggest a struggle, even though there doesn’t appear to be any sign of it on the victim.’

  The ME waved towards the corpse without looking at it. ‘Well, I can’t really do a proper examination of the body yet, not with the way it is. In fact, I’m wondering how we’re even going to get it out of here. God forgive me, but if we weren’t dealing with a death, I’d think we were in an episode of Mr Bean.’

  Although the ME had seen almost all the variations that death could offer during the course of his career, even he seemed bemused by the circumstances of this one.

  ‘Let us know the results of the post mortem as soon as possible,’ Burroni sighed.

  ‘Of course. From what I gather, I’m likely to get a phone call quite soon telling me this case is top priority.’

  He left them to join the men who had come to remove the body, and who were standing by the piano with bewildered expressions on their faces.

  ‘What do you think, Jordan?’ Burroni asked.

  ‘Frankly, I’m not yet sure what to think. And that worries me a little.’

  ‘Do you reckon we’re dealing with a serial killer?’

  ‘Everything seems to point to it, but I’m not entirely convinced. We’re clearly dealing with someone who’s not right in the head, someone with his own private symbolism, but it all seems a bit too elaborate, too complicated . . . Serial killers, at the moment of contact with their victims, are usually wilder, more frenzied, less concentrated. I don’t know. I think we should have a word with the bodyguard.’

  Burroni made a sign to the officer who had greeted them in the lobby and brought them up to the apartment, a sturdy black man with a moustache, who was still standing by the door of the elevator. He left his post and joined them.

  ‘Where’s the man who found the body?’

  ‘Follow me.’

  They made their way past the members of the Crime Scene team, who were just finishing off their work, and through the apartment – a walk that confirmed to them its vast size and luxury – until they came to a large room that was clearly some kind of study. On the walls were high bookcases full of books that could be reached with the use of metal ladders running on rails. A large pair of French doors facing the entrance led to a balcony that was probably the continuation of the one outside the living room.

  Behind a desk partly occupied by a computer, a man was sitting. He got to his feet when he saw them come in. He was tall and athletic-looking, with grey hair, angular features, and a small scar near the right ear.

  ‘I’m Detective Burroni and this is Jordan Marsalis, a police consultant.’

  Jordan might once have smiled at a term like that, which meant everything and nothing. Now it just made him feel like an intruder, more anxious than ever to keep in the background and let Burroni be the official face of the investigation.

  ‘I assume I spoke to you on the phone, Mr . . .?’

  ‘Haze. Randall Haze. Yes, it was me who called you when I discovered what had happened.’

  The man came out from behind the desk and Burroni and Jordan shook hands with him in turn. He was a strong man: you could sense it not only from his grip but by the way he moved. It was the kind of strength that came from the experience of the streets, not from fake martial arts schools or gyms where people were pumped full of steroids.

  ‘Before we go on, there’s something I want to say,’ he told them. ‘I guess you’re lifting prints from all over the apartment . . .’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And of course you’ll find mine, too. So I’ll tell you this before you discover it for yourselves. I’ve done time. Five years for assault and attempted murder. I’m not justifying myself, just explaining. I was a rough kid, I made a mistake and I paid for it. Since then, I’ve gone straight.’

  ‘OK, noted. Please sit down, Mr Haze.’

  Before he sat down again in one of the two armchairs in front of the desk, Haze arranged the crease in the pants of his elegant dark-grey suit. Burroni walked to the French doors and stood there for a moment, staring out at the darkness.

  ‘How long have you been working for Miss Stuart?’

  ‘About five years, give or take a month.’

  ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘Bodyguard and private secretary.’

  ‘How private, exactly?’

  ‘My job was to accompany Miss Stuart in personal situations she preferred not to . . . how shall I put it? . . . not to make public.’

  For the moment, Burroni chose not to pursue that subject. ‘So tell us what happened.’

  ‘This evening Chand . . . Miss Stuart called me.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Around eight thirty, I think. In any case she called me on her cellphone. You should be able to check the time from the phone company’s records.’

  Burroni turned, with the fleeting expression on his face of someone who doesn’t like being taught how to do his job. ‘All right, we will if we have to. And what did she want?’

  ‘She told me to be here by midnight because she was planning to go out. I got here at a quarter of twelve, came up to the apartment and found the body. I immediately grabbed the phone and called you.’

  ‘Was it normal for her to go out at that hour?’

  ‘In some cases, yes. Miss Stuart was . . .’ Randall Haze broke off, bowed his head and looked at the floor as if a chasm had suddenly opened up between his shiny shoes.

  At this point, Jordan decided to intervene and went and sat down on the chair facing him.

  ‘Mr Haze, listen to me. There’s something here I don’t understand and when that happens I feel stupid. Unless it’s the person I’m talking to who’s stupid. And I don’t think that’s the case here. So, is there something we should know?’

  Haze let out a sigh. ‘Miss Stuart was sick.’

  ‘What do you mean by “sick”?’

  ‘I don’t know what else to call it. She was sick in the head. She had very dangerous tastes and the biggest part of my work was to protect her
whenever she satisfied them.’

  ‘Can you be more spectifc?’

  ‘Chandelle Stuart was a nymphomaniac who liked being raped.’

  Jordan and Burroni looked at each other. They were both thinking the same thing: this could mean big complications.

  Haze continued his story without need for further prompting. ‘I went with her to protect her in situations that most women would have thought of as their worst nightmares. Some nights, Chandelle had sex with ten, even twelve men at a time. Homeless people, vagrants, people of all races. And it was completely risky sex, without any kind of precautions. At other times, I had to stay hidden here in the apartment in case one of the sadists she’d invited home went a bit too far and did her real harm. And then there were the films.’

  ‘What films?’

  ‘The ones I made. Everthing she got up to, either here or outside, I had to film with a digital camera. Then it was all transferred to DVD and she’d watch it later. It gave her a kick, watching herself in those kinds of situations. The discs should be here somewhere.’

  Burroni and Jordan looked at each other again.

  ‘I assume Miss Stuart paid you well for these services of yours,’ Jordan said.

  ‘Oh yes. When it came to money Chandelle Stuart was very generous. When she wanted, she could be generous in all kinds of ways . . .’ Randall Haze bowed his head again.

  ‘A few more questions and you’ll be free to go. Does anything seem to be missing from the apartment?’

  It was just a routine question: both Burroni and Jordan knew perfectly well that robbery was extremely unlikely as a motive for this homicide.

  ‘At first sight, I’d say no. Seems to me everything’s normal.’

  ‘And have you noticed anything or anyone suspicious lately? Anything unusual, I mean.’

  ‘No, everything she ever did was unusual.’

  ‘Do you know if Miss Stuart ever saw or knew a man named Gerald Marsalis? He was also known as Jerry Ko.’

  ‘You mean the Mayor’s son, the guy who was killed a while ago? I saw his picture in the papers. As far as I know, she didn’t. Though come to think of it, one time when I was with her at a disco called Pangya, he was there. They passed each other and waved their hands. So maybe they did know each other, but in all the time I’ve worked for her, I never heard her mention his name, and I certainly don’t think they ever saw each other.’