“Here you go—door-to-door service. Can’t beat it. I’ll park this buggy and meet you inside.”
It didn’t take him long to find a parking garage with vacancies. He drove all the way to the top for some added privacy and a good signal. The number he wanted was right there in the phone’s address book. He punched it in. This should be good. Now just let the bastard scum be there.
And let him have caller ID.
John Maggione answered himself. “Who’s this?” he asked, and sounded bent out of shape already.
Bingo! The man himself. They’d hated each other since Maggione’s father had let Sullivan do some jobs for him.
“Take a guess, Junior.”
“I have no fucking idea. How’d you get this number? Whoever you are, you’re a dead man.”
“Then I guess we’ve got something in common.”
Adrenaline raced through Sullivan’s system. He felt unstoppable right now. He was the best around at this kind of thing: setting up a target, playing with a mark.
“That’s right, Junior. The hunter becomes the hunted. It’s Michael Sullivan. Remember me? And you know what? I’m coming for you next.”
“The Butcher? Is that you, punk? I was going to kill you anyway, but now I’m going to make you pay for what you did to Benny. You piece of shit, I’m gonna hurt you so bad.”
“What I did to Benny is nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to cut you in two with a butcher saw, and send half to your mother, and the other half to your wife. I’ll let Connie see it just before I fuck her in front of your kids. What do you think of that?”
Maggione exploded. “You are dead! You are so dead! Everything you ever cared about is . . . dead. I’m coming after you, Sullivan.”
“Yeah, well, take a number.”
He flipped the phone closed, then looked at his watch. That felt good—talking to Maggione like that. Seven fifty. He wouldn’t even miss U2’s opening number.
Chapter 59
I HAD JUST FINISHED UP with the day’s final session and was looking through the old files on Maria’s case again, when an unexpected hard knock came against the office door. What now?
I opened it to find Sampson standing out in the hallway.
He had a twelve-pack of Corona stuffed under one arm, and the carton of beer looked ridiculously small in relation to his body. Something was up.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t allow drinking during sessions.”
“All right. I hear you. I guess me and my imaginary friends will just be on our way.”
“But seeing how much you obviously need therapy, I’ll make an exception this one time.”
He handed me a cold beer as I let him in. Something was definitely going on. Sampson had never been to my office before.
“Looking good around here already,” he said. “I still owe you a hanging plant or something.”
“Don’t pick out any art for me. Spare me that.”
Thirty seconds later, the Commodores were on the CD player—Sampson’s choice—and Sampson was flopped down on my couch. It looked like a love seat under him.
But before I could even begin to unwind, he blindsided me. “Do you know Kim Stafford?”
I took a swill of beer to cover my reaction. Kim had been my last patient of the day. It made sense that Sampson might have seen her leaving, but how he knew who she was, I had no idea.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Uh, I’m a police detective. . . . I just saw her outside. The lady is kind of hard to miss. She’s Jason Stemple’s girlfriend.”
“Jason Stemple?” Sampson had said it like I should know who that was. And in a strange way, I did, just not by his name.
I was glad Kim had come back for more sessions, but she was firm about not identifying her fiancé, even as the abuse at home seemed to have gotten worse.
“He works Sixth District,” Sampson said. “I guess he came on the force after you left.”
“Sixth District? As in, he’s a cop?”
“Yeah. I don’t envy him that beat though. It’s rough over there these days.”
My mind was reeling, and I felt a little sick to my stomach. Jason Stemple was a cop?
“How’s the Georgetown case going?” I asked, probably to get Sampson off the track he was going down.
“Nothing new,” he said, sliding right over to the new subject. “I’ve covered three out of the four known victims, and I’m still not out of the gate.”
“So no one’s talking at all? After what happened to them? That’s hard to believe. Don’t you think so, John?”
“I do. A woman I spoke with today, army captain, she admitted the rapist made some kind of bad threat against her family. Even that was more than she wanted to say.”
We finished our beers in silence. My mind alternated between Sampson’s case and Kim Stafford and her policeman fiancé.
Sampson downed the last of his Corona; then he sat up and handed me another. “So listen,” he said. “I’ve got one more interview to do—lawyer who was raped. One more chance to maybe crack this thing open.”
Uh-oh, here it comes.
“Monday afternoon?”
I swiveled in my chair to look at the appointment book on my desk. Wide open. “Damn, I’m all booked up.”
I opened my second beer. A long slat of light came in through the wooden blinds, and I traced it with my eyes back over to where Sampson sat, looking at me with that heavy glare of his. Man Mountain, that was one of the names I had for him. Two-John was another.
“What time on Monday?” I finally asked.
“Three o’clock. I’ll pick you up, sugar.” He reached over and clinked his beer bottle against mine. “You know, you just cost me seven bucks.”
“How’s that?”
“The twelve-pack,” he said. “I would have gotten a six if I’d known you’d be this easy.”
Chapter 60
MONDAY, THREE O’CLOCK. I shouldn’t be here, but here I am anyway.
From what I could tell so far, the firm of Smith, Curtis and Brennan’s legal specialty was old money. The expensive-looking wood-paneled reception area, with its issues of Golf Digest, Town & Country, and Forbes on the side tables, seemed to speak for itself: The clients of this firm sure didn’t come from my neighborhood.
Mena Sunderland was a junior partner and also our third known rape victim, chronologically. She seemed to blend in to the office, with a gray designer business suit and the kind of gracious reserve that sometimes comes from Southern breeding. She led us back to a small conference room and closed the vertical blinds on the glass wall before letting the conversation begin.
“I’m afraid this is a waste of your time,” she told us. “I don’t have anything new to say. I told that to the other detective. Several times.”
Sampson slid a piece of paper over to her. “We were wondering if this might help.”
“What is it?”
“A draft press statement. If any information goes public, this will be it.”
She scanned the statement while he explained. “It puts this investigation on an aggressive path and says that none of the known victims have been willing to identify the attacker or testify against him.”
“Is that actually true?” she asked, looking up from the paper.
Sampson started to respond, but a sudden gut reaction flashed through me, and I cut him off. I started to cough. It was kind of a sloppy move, but it worked fine.
“Could I trouble you for a glass of water?” I asked Mena Sunderland. “I’m sorry.”
When she left the room, I turned to Sampson. “I don’t think she should know it’s all down to her.”
“Okay. I guess I agree.” Sampson nodded and said, “But if she asks—”
“Let me take this,” I said. “I’ve got a feeling about her.” My famous “feelings” were part of my reputation, but that didn’t mean Sampson had to go along. If there had been more time for discussion, I would have worried ab
out it, but Mena Sunderland came back a second later. She had two bottles of Fiji water and two glasses. She even braved a smile.
As I drank the water she gave me, I noticed Sampson sit back in his chair. That was my cue to take over.
“Mena,” I said, “we’d like to try to find some kind of common ground with you. Between what you’re comfortable talking about and what we need to know.”
“Meaning what?” she asked.
“Meaning, we don’t necessarily need a description of this man to catch him.”
I took her silence as a green flag, however tentative.
“I’d like to ask you some questions. They’re all yes or no. You can answer with one word or even just shake your head if you like. And if any question is too uncomfortable for you, it’s fine to pass.”
A smile threatened the corners of her mouth. My technique was facile, and she knew it. But I wanted to keep this as nonthreatening as possible.
She tucked a long strand of blond hair behind her ear. “Go ahead. For the moment.”
“On the night of the attack, did this man make specific threats to keep you from talking after he was gone?”
She nodded first, then verbalized her answer. “Yes.”
Suddenly, I was hopeful. “Did he make threats against other people you know? Family, friends, that sort of thing?”
“Yes.”
“Has he contacted you since that night? Or made his presence known in any other way?”
“No. I thought I saw him again on my street one time. It probably wasn’t him.”
“Were his threats more than verbal? Was there anything else he did to make sure you wouldn’t talk?”
“Yes.”
I’d hit on something, I could tell. Mena Sunderland looked down at her lap for a few seconds and then back up at me again. The tension on her face had given way to something more like resolve.
“Please, Mena. This is important.”
“He took my BlackBerry,” she said. She paused for a few seconds, then went on. “It had all my personal information. Addresses, everything. My friends, my family back home in Westchester.”
“I see.”
And I did. It fit right in with my preliminary profile of this monster.
I started a silent ten count in my head. When I got to eight, Mena spoke again.
“There were pictures,” she said.
“I’m sorry? Pictures?”
“Photographs. Of people he killed. Or at least, said he killed. And”—she took a moment to muster the next part—“mutilated. He talked about using butcher saws, surgical scalpels.”
“Mena, can you tell me anything else about those photos he showed you?”
“He made me look at several, but I only really remember the first one. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” The sudden memory of it came into her eyes, and I saw it take hold. Pure horror. Her focus went soft.
After several seconds, she collected herself and spoke again. “Her hands,” she said, then stopped herself.
“What about her hands, Mena?”
“He’d cut off both her hands. And in the picture—she was still alive. She was obviously screaming.” Her voice closed down to barely a whisper. We were at the danger line; I felt it right away. “He called her Beverly. Like they were old friends.”
“Okay,” I said gently. “We can stop here if you want.”
“I want to stop,” she said. “But.”
“Go ahead, Mena.”
“That night . . . he had a scalpel. There was already somebody’s blood on it.”
Chapter 61
THIS WAS HUGE, but it was also bad news. It could be anyway.
If Mena Sunderland’s description was accurate—and why wouldn’t it be?—we weren’t just talking about serial rape anymore. It was a serial murder case. Suddenly, my mind flipped over to Maria’s murder, the serial rape case back then. I tried to put Maria out of my mind for the moment. One case at a time.
I wrote down as much as I could remember right after the meeting with Mena, while Sampson gave me a ride home. He had taken his own notes during the interview, but getting these things from my mind onto paper helps me piece a case together sometimes.
My preliminary profile of the rapist was making more and more sense. Trusting first impressions, wasn’t that what the bestseller Blink was all about? The photos that Mena described—keepsakes of whatever kind—were fairly common in serial cases, of course. The photographs would help tide him over during his downtime. And in a grisly new twist, he had used the souvenirs to keep his living victims right where he wanted them—paralyzed with fear.
As we drove through Southeast, Sampson finally broke the silence in the car. “Alex, I want you to come onto this case. Officially,” he said. “Work with us. Work with me on this one. Consult. Whatever you want to call it.”
I looked over at him. “I thought you might be ticked off at me about taking over a little back there.”
He shrugged. “No way. I don’t argue with results. Besides, you’re already in this, right? You might as well be getting paid for it. You couldn’t walk away from the case now if you tried.”
I shook my head and frowned, but only because he was right. I could feel a familiar buzz starting in my mind—my thoughts involuntarily locking on to the case. It’s one of the things that makes me good at the job, but also the reason I find it impossible to be kind of involved in an investigation.
“What am I supposed to tell Nana?” I asked him, which I guess was my way of saying yes.
“Tell her the case needs you. Tell her Sampson needs you.” He took a right onto Fifth Street, and my house came into view. “Better think of something fast, though. She’ll smell it on you for sure. She’ll see it in your eyes.”
“You want to come in?”
“Nice try.” He left the car running when he stopped at the curb.
“Here I go,” I said. “Wish me luck with Nana.”
“Hey, man, no one said police work wasn’t dangerous.”
Chapter 62
I WORKED ON THE CASE that night in the attic office. It was late when I decided I’d had enough.
I went downstairs and grabbed my keys—I was in the habit most nights of taking a spin in the new Mercedes, my crossover car. It drove like an absolute dream, and the seats were as comfy as anything in our living room. Just turn on the CD player, sit back, and relax. This was good stuff.
When I finally got to bed that night, my thoughts took me back to a place I still needed to visit now and then. A sanctuary. My honeymoon with Maria. Maybe the best ten days of my life. Everything was still vivid in my mind.
The sun drops just below the palms as it sinks toward a horizontal line of blue out beyond the balcony of our hotel. The empty spot in the bed next to me is still warm where Maria was until a minute ago.
Now she’s standing at the mirror.
Beautiful.
She’s wearing nothing but one of my dress shirts, open down the front, and getting ready for dinner.
She always says her legs are too skinny, but I find them long and lovely and get turned on just looking at them—at her in the mirror.
I watch as Maria sweeps her shiny black hair back into a clip. It shows off the long line of her neck. God, I adore her.
“Do that again,” I say.
She indulges me without a word.
When she tilts her head to put on an earring, her eye catches mine in the mirror.
“I love you, Alex.” She turns to face me. “No one will ever love you the way I do.”
Her eyes hold mine, and I believe that I can see what she’s feeling inside. The way we think is so unbelievably close. I stretch my hand out from the bed for her, and say—
Chapter 63
SOMETHING HEARTFELT.
But I couldn’t remember what it was now.
I sat up—all alone in my bed—jarred from the half-awake, half-asleep place I’d just been. My memory had stumbled onto a blank spot, like
a hole in the ground that wasn’t there before.
The details of our honeymoon in Barbados had always been so crystal clear in my mind. Why couldn’t I remember what I’d said to Maria?
The clock next to me glowed: 2:15.
I was wide awake, though.
Please, God, I thought, these memories are what I have left. All I have. Don’t take them away too.
I switched on the light.
Staying in bed now wasn’t an option. I wandered out into the hall, thinking maybe I’d go down and play the piano.
At the top of the stairs, I stopped with my hand on the banister. The soft, rasping sound of Ali’s breath held me where I was.
I stepped into his room and watched my little boy from the doorway.
He was just a small lump under the covers, and a bare foot sticking out; his breath sounded like a miniature snore.
The Blue’s Clues nightlight on the wall was just enough to show his face. Little Alex’s eyebrows were knitted tightly, as though he was deep in thought, just the way I look sometimes.
When I crawled under the covers, he nuzzled up to my chest and pressed his head into the crook of my arm.
“Hi, Daddy,” he said, half-awake.
“Hey, pup,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
“Did you have a bad dream?”
I smiled. It was a question I’d asked him countless times in the past. Now the words came back to me like a piece of myself I’d let go.
He’d given me my words. I gave him Maria’s. “I love you, Ali. No one will ever love you the way I do.”
The boy was perfectly still, probably asleep already. I lay there with my hand on his shoulder until his breathing went back to that same soft rhythm as before. And then somewhere in there, I went back to be with Maria.
Chapter 64
THE MEMORIES OF HIS FATHER were always the strongest when Michael Sullivan was with his sons. The bright-white butcher shop, the freezer in the back, the Bone Man who came once a week to pack up meat carcasses, the smells of Irish Carrigaline cheese, and of black-and-white pudding.
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