by Oliver Stark
He moved his hand from William’s mouth. The spoon fell to the floor and bounced to a stop.
Nick looked down at his son, now able to hear the words he was repeating over and over again.
‘Sorry, Daddy,’ William was saying. ‘Sorry, Daddy. Sorry, Daddy.’
Over and over again.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
East River
December 3, 6.04 p.m.
Nick fled the house and ran and ran until he was at the very edge of Queens overlooking the East River.
This was it. Sebastian had gone too far. He had threatened Nick’s own child. His own boy. Nick loved his boy. He loved him so much. Didn’t he? He was going mad.
Alone by the water, surrounded by silence, Nick shut his eyes, in tears. Sebastian’s girls were banging and thumping the glass. Nick could see them too. He could see them crying in pain. All Sebastian’s women crying out in agony in his glass cage.
Nick moved up close to the cage. He had to see what they were saying. He was so close his mouth was against the glass.
He needed to shatter their prison, set them free. He had to hear them, to know if they forgave him. He had to free them because it was they who brought Sebastian to him. If he let them go, Sebastian would disappear too.
At the water’s edge, he drew the pistol up to his head. He pushed the barrel tight into his ear.
He promised them freedom. He said he would free them. He only had to shatter the glass cage.
It had been a long journey. Sebastian had killed people to get back to them. Back to his girls. Now Nick was going to end it.
His forefinger applied three pounds of pressure to the toe of the trigger. Another three pounds and the spring would be released. The firing pin would move to the primer. The small explosion would ignite the main charge, the bullet would drive from its case.
Another three pounds of pressure was all he needed to be free.
The water glistened with diamond tips, the seagulls swooped with arrogant ease, their dark voices carrying over the river.
Another three pounds of pressure.
Then the girls stopped screaming. Nick saw them turn and look in the other direction. He saw them close their mouths in fear. He saw why. Sebastian was right there. He had returned.
Nick knew he had missed his chance - and he could not be sure he would get another.
Chapter Ninety-Eight
Blue Team
December 3, 6.50 p.m.
Harper arrived back in Manhattan and returned to Blue Team. He pushed the door of the investigation room and stood panting. ‘Anybody got anything?’
Blank faces turned. Nobody had an idea. It was killing him, knowing that there was almost nothing he could do. He called Eddie Kasper and relayed the story of Chloe Mestella.
‘It needs looking into,’ said Eddie.
‘Feds are on their way to West Virginia.’
‘Fuck the Feds, Tom, this is our girl. We got blood ties - we can’t leave it to them. You want me to get over there?’
Harper put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. ‘You’re a waste of space, but I can always count on you. Thanks, buddy.’
Eddie smiled. ‘You had to do the insult or the nice part wouldn’t come, would it?’
Tom shook his head. ‘Not easy for me to say. Now get going.’
Eddie pulled on his jacket and left the precinct. Tom went to Denise’s board. He looked at her face. He wanted to know why Sebastian had taken her. He wanted to know why Sebastian had killed Williamson and now was after him. It would take time to get to West Virginia. Too much time.
Harper took a cup of coffee and sat down at his computer. He had to find something soon. He called up Chloe Mestella on the internet and read about the murder. If it was still an open case, then the records would be there in the local sheriff’s office. Harper looked up the number and picked up the phone.
‘Sheriff’s office. How can I help you?’
‘This is Detective Harper of the NYPD. I know you’ve got some Feds rushing down your way to look into the Chloe Mestella murder, but I’m looking for some help.’
‘What can I do for you, Detective?’ said the woman on the phone.
‘Have you been following the American Devil case?’
‘Sure have. Isn’t everybody?’
‘I’m Tom, by the way. What’s your name?’
‘Carla.’
‘You could make a big difference up here, Carla.’
‘How so?’
‘Can I speak confidentially?’
‘Sure, go ahead, I’ve got a missing set of tyres that I’ve got to investigate but other than that I’m free the rest of December.’
Harper laughed. ‘Thanks. I appreciate your time.’
‘No problem. I read about you, Detective Harper.’
‘Call me Tom.’
‘Bet you think we’re all a bunch of hillbillies out here, don’t you?’
‘Hey, I’d prefer to be out in the mountains with some spare time to watch the eagles than here in Homicide.’
‘You like raptors?’
‘Have to say yeah. Must have a thing about killers.’
‘So how can I help you, Tom?’
‘Thing is,’ said Tom, ‘Chloe’s murder happened way before they started keeping central records. Long before ViCAP and all these clever little tools that help us see the big picture. Do you remember the murder yourself, Carla?’
‘Yeah, but I was only six years old. Still, it was a big thing here. Felt like we were important for fifteen minutes.’
‘What about the family?’
‘Don Mestella still lives at the old house. Mrs Mestella died a few years back. They still keep Chloe’s room just like it was. Most of the time, they just used to sit together in silence. It killed them.’
‘Could you read me some details of the report?’
‘Sure thing,’ said Carla. ‘I got the big brown boxes out ready for the Feds. What do you want?’
‘Give me the basics. I just want to know if it’s our guy.’
Carla opened the old box and pulled out the police report. She opened the beige folder. The horror of Chloe Mestella’s murder was hardwired into her psyche. As a child, she’d watched the vast opera of a murder hunt unfold in her back yard. Seeing the original report made her shiver.
‘I never looked at this,’ she said. ‘It’s spooky.’
‘What’s the MO?’
Carla flicked through a couple of pages. Memories that were years old came immediately to the surface. Her voice was edgy. ‘Chloe was found naked on her bed by her mother. She was posed like a beauty queen or something with her hair all lying out on her pillow, but she had a big cut all the way up her chest. He cut out her heart. It was a botched job. Very messy.’
‘It’s the same MO,’ said Harper faintly.
‘She was covered in flower petals. It happened on Valentine’s Day. Nice touch.’
It was the American Devil all right. The thought was terrifying. A man had started killing some twenty-five years earlier and he was still evading the police.
Harper and Carla talked through the rest of the details for the next half-hour, but the original investigation had got nowhere. In the end they put it down as a passing vagrant. It was anything but a vagrant.
‘What are you looking for, Tom?’ said Carla after they’d exhausted the reports.
‘I don’t know. Anything that might open up an angle here.’
‘Well, I’ll be here if you need me,’ said Carla.
Harper put the phone down. Sebastian had killed before. What did that mean? If Denise’s profile was right and the killer was in his thirties, then even if he was approaching forty that put him around mid-teens in 1982. Was that possible? Could this whole horror story have started as someone’s adolescent fantasy?
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Mace Crindle Plant
December 3, 8.30 p.m.
‘Dr Levene,’ said the strange, contorted voice. Denise jerked her h
ead. He was back, but his voice was different. It wasn’t so deep and full. It was kinder.
‘Are you listening, Dr Levene?’
The way he crept silently into the antechamber worried her. Was he studying her? He might’ve been sitting there for hours watching her. A patch of light hit the floor of her prison.
‘Please, Dr Levene.’
Denise didn’t reply. Not yet. Make him work for it.
‘I want to talk to you.’
Stay composed, Denise.
‘My name’s Nick.’ Nick felt sick in his stomach. He knew how dangerous this was. Sebastian wouldn’t forgive him for intruding. ‘I didn’t know who you were when I found you down here, then I put two and two together. You’re the woman they’re all looking for, aren’t you? You’re in every newspaper. Every one.’
Denise listened. What game was he playing? ‘Where’s Sebastian?’
‘Sebastian hurt my son today.’ Nick hung his head low. ‘Sebastian took a spoon to his eye. He was going to gouge out my son’s eye. I’ve got to stop him.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Denise.
Nick moved erratically around the room.
‘Please don’t ask any more. I’m not in control of what he does. I can’t stop him. He’s going to kill them all, Dr Levene. He wanted to kill you, but I forced him out. I needed to see you. You can help me. He’s going to starve you in this dungeon and then ...’
‘What?’
‘He wants to use you to get to Tom Harper. I’ve got pictures of him on my phone. That’s how I know. He leaves his victim’s pictures on my phone.’
‘Why does he want Tom Harper?’
‘I don’t know. I just know I can’t stop him.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Denise. ‘Who are you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nick. His voice was low and fearful, with a hint of West Virginia in there somewhere. ‘It’s in the Bible. It’s called demonic possession. He’s evil, Dr Levene, and he’s taking over.’
‘He’s inside your head?’
‘He’s in my head. He’s in my hands. I don’t want him to kill. He’ll kill my family. He knows I tried to stop him. That’s why he went for William, see. If I go home again, he’ll kill the boy. I love my boy, Doctor. I love my boy.’
Nick paused. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She couldn’t believe that this was the vicious, sadistic killer responsible for nine deaths. And that he was asking for her help. His voice was so soft and considered that it was difficult to imagine that it could belong to a killer.
‘If you’ve got some kind of multiple personality disorder,’ she said, ‘I can try to help you,’
‘How can you help me, Dr Levene? I’ve tried with psychologists. I’ve tried, but no one can stop him.’
‘We can try, Nick,’ she said. She had no idea what she was intending to do. She was just looking for something that gave her some control. ‘I can try some things with you, if you want me to ...’
‘If you can stop him, Dr Levene. If you can stop him killing my children.’
‘Yes,’ said Denise. ‘But you have to understand, you want to think he controls you, but he doesn’t. You control Sebastian, Nick, you just don’t realize it. Please, sit down, let me talk to you.’
Nick sat without another word and listened to the doctor.
Chapter One Hundred
Mace Crindle Plant
December 3, 9.00 p.m.
In a dungeon forty feet below Manhattan, an old pump room with brick walls was about to witness a bizarre experiment. Nick was going to undergo CBT. Denise was going to alter his behaviour - at least for long enough to allow her to escape. It had to work. But first they had to trust each other, form an alliance. An alliance against Sebastian. And Denise knew that she needed to convince Nick that it was not about Sebastian, it was about himself. It was Nick who let this fiend take over and control things. In that respect he was no different from a drunk or a violent husband or a depressive.
Denise found her mind twisting between the horror of her situation and the practical truth that the anti-social part of his behaviour needed to be removed from his coping strategies. She was even surprised herself that she could switch so easily from a horrified victim to a doctor.
Nick stayed in his seat. Denise was hooded but free to move around. She needed to move to think.
Nick sat patiently and expectantly. In his eyes, she - like Marty before her - was his only hope of escaping this vicious cycle of murder and guilt. He was nervous, though. Anxious about the treatment and afraid because Sebastian would punish him for letting her do this.
She started by trying to find the words, trying to formulate a way forward. It was hard. The circumstances were so strange that she was close to shrieking, but she didn’t. She opened her mouth and let the routine come out all of its own accord.
‘What this is called, Nick, is cognitive behavioural therapy. What we’ve got to do is identify the problem we have. I don’t want to know about your childhood or any internal feelings, I just need to know which actions and behaviour you find unacceptable.’
‘He murders people, Dr Levene! I want to stop him hurting people!’ Nick shouted and then hid his face in his hands, ashamed of his weakness.
‘What we have to do is to discover the nature of the problem in terms of the pattern inside your head. The relationships between how you feel, what you think and what you do. Do you understand that? Feel-think-do. We’ve got to look closely at these things.’
Nick stayed silent. He was thinking. Feel-think-do - that was Sebastian all over. He felt the urge, he thought about it and then he killed. Feel-think-do.
‘We will agree goals for you and a method of identifying trigger feelings and trigger words, then we will find a simple physical way to re-programme your behaviour. That sound okay?’
‘Yes.’
She breathed deeply. This was a journey into the unknown. She knew that CBT had been successful even in cases of extreme schizophrenia, so why not with this guy?
Denise’s hunch was that Nick had called on Sebastian early in his life when he needed help to cope with some painful trauma that had made him feel so weak and useless that he basically collapsed inside. Sebastian had been a saviour at some point - a friend, someone who supported Nick and gave him strength. But when strange demonic urges started entering Nick’s head, Sebastian was there to take the blame. Then, at some point, Sebastian had started living an independent existence.
‘Do you think what you do is wrong?’ she asked.
‘I know it is. I can see that what Sebastian does is evil.’
She felt that if she could connect to him, she might prevent him from hurting someone else. She continued: ‘Let’s try some basics. Let’s see if we can stop the urges becoming so bad that Sebastian shows up. Shall we? Shall we try to see if we can keep things so quiet, he doesn’t even know you’re there?’
Nick smiled. ‘Yeah, that sounds good.’
She took him through the events leading up to the point where Sebastian took over. She was trying to identify the trigger. The emotion. The thought.
‘What sets him going? What brings him out?’
‘Fear, I think. Water, too. When he sees the kind of girl he likes, he comes into my throat.’
‘That’s a compulsion, isn’t it? You feel a compulsion, but it’s mutated into him. So you feel weak and you feel this strong desire and then he comes, doesn’t he?’
‘Yeah. I guess.’
‘There’s something that releases him. What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Think!’
‘This is hard for me!’ Nick shouted. He felt the power rise and his spine erupt with sudden anger. He put the tap on hard. Water rushed across the floor. Nick felt the light flash across his mind.
‘He’s coming,’ he said.
‘What can we do?’
‘Nothing. He’s here.’
Denise ran to Nick and put her hands on his arms.
‘Please help me.’
Nick stood up. He looked around. He could feel the demonic power coming up through his body. He had about thirty seconds before Sebastian would be there. As quickly as he could, he untied Denise’s headgear. Then he ran to the internal door, a single barred exit. He rushed outside, threw the door shut and pulled a key out of his pocket. He was concentrating hard. His hand was shaking as he locked the door. Sebastian was in his head, right there: any second he’d be out. Nick tossed the key through the bars.
‘I’ve locked you in to protect you, Dr Levene. Throw the key down the sluice grate. If you’ve got it, he’ll kill everyone you know until you give it him back or just shoot at you until you come to him.’ Nick suddenly went into spasms against the bars of the door.
Denise pulled off her headgear and searched around. She saw the small key, and against all her instincts she lurched to the sluice grate and threw it down into the sewer.
Behind her the bars of the door rattled and thumped. Sebastian was the other side and he wanted her badly. He was snorting with rage.
He stared at her through the bars. She stared back. There was no way out any more. She felt the horror in every muscle of her body.
‘The water brings me out,’ said Sebastian. ‘I always did like the sound of water.’ He had arrived.
‘Is that you, Sebastian?’ said Denise, keeping the tremor hidden in her voice.
‘Yes, it’s me. Seeing you there, Dr Levene, seeing you there, it makes me . . . it makes me so full of anger. I want to kill you now. Cut you open, put my hands inside that warm skin of yours.’
Once upon a time Denise had watched a man in a cage with a tiger. The tiger had become aggressive. The man didn’t back down. He hit the tiger and pushed her away. Even when the tiger broke his arm, he remained in the superior position. It had saved his life.
‘I want to feel your neck, Denise. That’s a feeling you don’t forget. Now I’m thinking about it. I just might do it.’
