“Why must you always be so businesslike?” she said. “Can’t we just chat for a moment? What have you been up to, sugar?”
“Are you looking for Chuck?”
She sighed, and in that sound he heard anger and frustration as well as resignation.
“Maybe I’m just calling to talk to you.”
“I’m sorry, Susan, but I was just heading out the door,” he lied. Cowardly, perhaps, but he had forced out all the coldness he could afford already and had no wish for a confrontation.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.” She sounded so forlorn, he almost felt sorry for her.
“I’ll tell him you called,” he said, his voice softening.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “He knows I’m trying to reach him. I must have left a dozen messages on his cell phone. Never mind. Guess I’ll just have to stay in the doghouse for a while.”
“I’ll tell him anyway.”
“Oh, you’re a sweetheart, really,” she said.
There was a knock on the glass partition of the door, and he looked up to the see the clerk standing there.
She pointed at his phone. “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t use your cell phone down here.”
“I gotta go,” he said to Susan, and he slipped the phone back into his pocket.
The clerk unlocked the door and poked her head inside. “I gotta leave in about fifteen minutes. You want to stay much longer?”
“No, I’ll be right out—thanks,” he said. There wasn’t much he hadn’t already seen here and nothing he was unaware of.
He picked up the papers on the table and put them back into the box. As he did, a slip of paper slid out and onto the floor. He bent to pick it up. On it, scribbled in Laura’s handwriting, was a name and a phone number: Thomas—202-555-1852. He recognized the area code as belonging to Washington, D.C. He had no idea who Thomas might be. Presumably Detective O’Reilly had followed up on the lead, but he was dead now.
Lee copied down the phone number, then put the lid back on the box and called for the attendant. When he got home, he was going to give Thomas in Washington, D.C., a call.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Wednesday was the first day of Hanukah, so Butts was spending the day with his wife’s family. “I think religion’s a bunch of bunk,” he’d said the night before, “but being Jewish has its perks. We may not get such cool presents, but we get a lot more days off.”
Lee knew perfectly well that Butts would find time during the festivities to sneak off and work on the case, but he’d just smiled and nodded.
The first thing Lee did that morning was to dial the phone number of the mysterious Thomas. A man picked up on the second ring.
“Hello?” He sounded middle-aged, wary.
“Is Thomas there, please?”
The pause that followed told Lee the man knew something he didn’t want to divulge—for whatever reason.
“Who’s calling?”
He had the lie ready just in case.
“I’m his cousin. He asked me to look him up if I ever—”
“He moved to Philly.”
“Oh, do you have a number for him?”
“ No. ”
Lee could tell the man was getting ready to hang up. He made a stab at one last bit of information.
“Is he still working as a—”
To his relief, the man took the bait. “No—he’s in construction now.”
“Oh, right.”
“Look, I gotta go.”
“Thanks so much for your help.”
After he hung up, his initial feeling of triumph wore off quickly. He had a first name, city and a profession—now all he had to do was find a man named Thomas working construction in Philadelphia. Piece of cake, he thought grimly as he looked across the street at a crowd of people gathering in front of the Ukrainian church. Dressed in bulky winter coats and ski hats, they huddled together on the steps, their breath visible as white wisps in the frigid air. A young man distributed sheet music, and soon the sound of Christmas carols floated across the street.
God rest ye merry, Gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
Remember, Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas day,
To save us all from Satan’s power . . .
If only it were that easy, Lee thought as he dialed Brian O’Reilly’s home number. Gemma picked up on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” he said, unexpectedly warmed by the sound of her voice. “Can we get together?”
“I was going to call you—I have a copy of the note.”
“Great. I have something to tell you too.”
They arranged to meet at Jackson Hole, on the Upper East Side, in an hour. Lee slipped on his coat and headed downstairs. The carolers across the street were just hitting their stride, their voices clear and sweet in the thin stillness of winter.
Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King,
Peace on earth, and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled!”
Alas, some sinners were not so easily reconciled with God—or man, for that matter, Lee thought as he slid out into the frosty air. The door closed behind him, the dead bolt clicking into place with the hollow sound of finality.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“ Sorry I’m late—I couldn’t find a damn cab!”
Lee looked up to see Gemma’s shiny, flushed face. It was as if all the stale air in the room had been pushed aside the moment she entered the Lexington Avenue restaurant. He felt the rush of blood to his own cheeks as she sat down opposite him. She wore a powder blue angora sweater, a little black skirt wrapped tightly around her trim hips. A shiver of pleasure ran up his spine at the sight of her.
“Are you all right?” she said, peering at him. “You’re not getting sick, are you?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just a little cold in here.”
She looked around the spotless restaurant. “Uh-oh—Mommy and Daddy will be starting a lawsuit to make sure their precious children don’t catch cold and hurt their chances of getting into Barnard.”
“You live around here, right?”
“Farther uptown—Yorkville, which isn’t quite so chichi.”
Lee looked around. “I was beginning to wonder if the smell of money was going to my head. I mean,” he said, lowering his voice, “these girls are loaded, right?”
“Oh, please!” She pointed to a tiny chocolate brown backpack hanging on a chair behind a pretty brunette. The girl’s head was lowered as she gossiped with her friends, her shiny hair hiding her face. “You see that chic little leather backpack? What she paid for it could cover my monthly rent and utilities, even with the Con Ed rate hike.”
“That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure.”
Gemma smiled and unfolded her napkin. “Men never know the price of luxury items or shoes. Quick, what would a hammer cost in a hardware store?”
“You could get a decent one for about ten dollars. Anything less wouldn’t be worth buying.”
“See what I mean? You know the price of hammers but not Versace backpacks.”
“I didn’t even know who Versace was until he was killed.”
Gemma laughed—a low, throaty chortle. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m not exactly a fashion maven.”
“I wouldn’t know the difference between Gucci and Kmart. I don’t know what the purpose of all this high fashion stuff is.”
“What’s the ‘purpose’ of a geranium? It doesn’t seek a higher goal or a justification for its existence. It simply is.”
“But geraniums were made by Nature.”
“And people make Gucci bags. We’re part of Nature.”
Lee shook his head. “I’m amazed by how some people spend their time and money.”
“Well, I’m going to spend my time and money having the biggest burger on the menu,” she said. “What are you having, Big Guy?”
“Big Guy?”
“I was thinking you need a nickname.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t everyone need a nickname?”
“It seems wrong for me—too bulky.”
“Okay, how about Thin Man? I could call you that.”
“I’m not that thin, am I?”
“You’re pretty skinny. I’ll bet everyone in your family is.”
“Yeah, my mother always was—still is, actually.”
“And your father?”
Lee pretended to study the menu, his eyes burning into the entrées section.
“Not much to say, really. He was there for a while, and then he wasn’t. Oldest story in the book—here one day, gone the next.”
“But everyone’s story is different.”
“Maybe. I just don’t have anything to add.”
When he thought about his father, he felt a cold, hard lump in the center of his soul, protected by many years of scar tissue. He had no desire to go in and dig around, opening old wounds, afraid it might unleash a tidal wave of rage so powerful, it would drown him and anyone close to him.
“Thanks for coming to the funeral,” she said. “Who was that man you were talking to?”
“I was hoping you might know,” he said, and he told her the whole thing.
When he finished, she said, “Wow. Did he seem like a kook to you?”
“Not at all. But he did seem really frightened. I was hoping he might have contacted you.”
“I don’t think so. But there are a few messages on Brian’s voice mail I haven’t listened to yet. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m afraid I won’t hear anything that helps solve his death—and equally afraid I will. Does that sound completely mental?”
He winced. Mental was what some of the beat cops called Lee behind his back. Word of his struggle with depression had gotten around pretty fast, and some members of the force were less than sympathetic about working with him.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t sound mental—it sounds human.”
She put a hand on his. Electricity shot up his arm at her touch.
“Thanks for being so supportive.”
After they ordered, Gemma leaned down to fish something out of her bag. He could smell her shampoo, something fruity and tart, like lemons.
“Here’s a copy of the suicide note,” she said, handing him a sheet of paper. “And here’s a copy of an e-mail he wrote to me a few days before his death.”
“I’ll give it to our forensic linguist and see what she says.”
“Thanks.”
“What will you do if it’s not a suicide?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It could be pretty dangerous trying to find out what really happened. I hate to say it, but not all the bad guys are outside the police force.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s what our mystery man seems to think.”
“Well, corruption is nothing new under the sun. What’s interesting is that we have a sense of fairness and justice at all.”
“You know, no matter how close I get to the center of all this stuff—studying these psychopaths, trying to get inside their heads—there’s always something elusive about it, a central mystery that’s always just beyond my grasp. It’s like an itch I can’t ever scratch—a goal that’s always receding.”
He looked at the pretty waitress stepping over a knapsack on the floor. She looked annoyed, her pert mouth pinched, her eyes narrowed in exasperation. Something about her face reminded him of Susan Morton. Hell hath no fury . . .
“Do you think if you ever got to the heart of things and really understood one of these guys completely, you might lose interest?” Gemma asked. “The Loch Ness syndrome?”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever thought about what it would be like if we ever found out exactly what is living in that lake?”
“I see what you mean,” he said. “It would be kind of a letdown, in a way.”
“Sometimes it’s the elusiveness of a goal that makes it so seductive.”
“So maybe we’re happier in a constant state of longing?” he said.
“Once you have something, it loses its appeal.”
“Well, some of its appeal.”
She smiled, a wry twisting of the corners of her mouth. Their conversation had become a form of foreplay, a delicate dance in which they tested the level of each other’s desire.
“There are so many mysteries in life,” she said. “Like why we’re attracted to some people instead of others.”
Just then their food arrived, and life’s grand questions had to wait for a couple of rare hamburgers dripping with caramelized onions.
Just as he was about to take a bite, Lee’s cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID—it was Kathy. Guilt twisted in his stomach; his first impulse was to ignore it, but he turned to Gemma.
“Will you excuse me a moment?”
“Sure.”
He slipped out into the street and flipped open the phone.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” she said, her voice hesitant and insecure. “I—I just don’t like where we left off last time, and I was wondering if we could meet again. I know you’re busy, but I—”
He looked back into the restaurant, where Gemma sat, studying some papers. He felt the pull of her, even from there.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”
He snapped his phone closed and went back inside.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Edmund’s lips curled in a smile as he stared at the Asian woman across from him in the diner. She bent over her menu, trying to ignore him, her smooth black hair sliding over her face, following the delicate angle of her neck.
He leaned back in the booth and picked up his own menu. He was patient—sooner or later she would have to look up again. He was an ugly man addicted to beautiful women. The irony wasn’t lost on him; he understood how he must appear to them, and yet he also saw the fascination in their eyes, as they caved before his charisma and charm.
The Asian woman’s hair was shiny and black, sleek as a seal. He continued to stare, knowing it made her uncomfortable but not caring. In fact, he liked it—her discomfort was part of the foreplay, a little dance he did with his victims. And even if he wasn’t going to take her, he thought, he would still enjoy the dance.
He thought about where he would leave her. An alley, of course—but which one? He had discovered a few new ones in his late-night rambles around the city, some really nice ones, with tidy little dwellings on either side. Mews, they called the nice ones. The not-so-nice ones they just called alleys. The shed where his father had locked him up—where he had dragged him on that terrible night—hadn’t been so nice. It had smelled of motor oil and hay and rusty pitchforks. He had lain on the dusty floor of the shed for a long time, his cheek throbbing, his tears stinging the burned flesh. He’d wanted so much for his mother to come, scoop him into her arms and tell him everything was going to be all right. But his mother never came—she was already gone, leaving him and his sister alone with his father. He hated her cowardice, just as he hated his father’s violence.
For years that hate had nowhere to go. It lived inside him, a burning furnace in his soul, until it twisted into a shape unlike that of other, normal human beings. Then, finally, he found a place for it, an expression of his darkness that was his alone.
He smiled at the waitress as she approached his table. He was hungry.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“You really think this creep’s gonna turn up?” asked Butts the next day as they approached the Tenth Avenue campus of John Jay College.
“I think it’s likely,” Lee replied. “This is the kind of offender who likes to insert himself into every phase of the investigation.”
Lee was about to give his lecture at John Jay, and Butts was attending it to see if the Alleyway Strangler showed up.
“Why not just hold a press conference and see if h
e comes to that?” the detective said as they ascended the broad staircase to the entrance.
“We can do that too, but I think there’s a good chance he’ll come to my lecture.”
“So if you take a drink of water and tap the bottle twice on the lectern, that’s my signal.”
“Right,” Lee said, showing his ID to the young woman at the security desk.
“But how do you indicate which guy it is?” Butts asked, fumbling for his badge.
“By looking at him.”
“Okay,” Butts said, flashing the girl his detective shield. “There’s not a lot we can do unless he makes trouble.”
They made their way through the turnstile and started up the stairs to the second floor.
“Wouldn’t it be helpful to have a look at his face, assuming he shows up?” said Lee.
“Yeah—frustrating, though. If it is him, I’ll wanna slap his ass in jail.”
“Well, you can’t do that, but you can get a good look at him.”
Butts grunted and trudged up the steps behind him.
Half an hour later, Lee looked out over the audience in the lecture hall. He hadn’t expected quite such a large turnout. The room was crowded with future cops, criminologists, psychologists and even a few firemen. Maybe Lucille Geffers was right when she told him that he had acquired some cachet around campus. He cleared his throat and began.
“As most of you are probably aware, the majority of homicides are situational, and in most cases the victim knows his or her killer. And yet there seems to be a public fascination with criminals who fall outside the normal spectrum of murderers. Among these are the repeat offenders we now refer to as serial killers.
“The term ‘serial killer’ has been thrown around a lot lately in the media. Appealing to our more sensationalist appetites, journalists like to splash these stories across the front page. After all, it sells papers. Some people claim statistics show there’s been an increase in the number of serial offenders operating at any given time in this country.
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