Shadowkiller

by Wendy Corsi Staub

Not in a let’s-hang-out-and-have-a-few-laughs way; in a let’s-cut-the-bullshit-and-get-down-to-business way.

  She briskly hands Vic a folder. “Take a look at this and let me know what you think.”

  “Now?”

  She clears her throat. “It’s not urgent, but . . .”

  Yeah, right. With Annabelle, everything is urgent.

  “Unless you were leaving . . .” She pauses, obviously waiting for him to tell her that he’ll take care of it before he goes.

  “I was.”

  Without even glancing at the file, Vic puts it on top of his in-box. The day’s been long enough and he’s more than ready to head home.

  Kitty is out at her book club tonight, but that’s okay with him. She called earlier to say she was leaving a macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven. The homemade kind, with melted cheddar and buttery breadcrumb topping.

  Better yet, both his favorite hometown teams—the New York Yankees and the New York Giants—are playing tonight. Vic can hardly wait to hit the couch with a fork in one hand and the TV remote control in the other.

  “All right, then.” Annabelle turns to leave, then turns back. “Oh, I heard about Chicago. Nice work. You got him.”

  “You mean her.”

  Annabelle shrugs. “How about it?”

  “It. Yeah, that works.”

  Over the course of Vic’s career, he hasn’t seen many true cases of MPD—multiple personality disorder—but this was one of them.

  The elusive Southside Strangler turned out to be a woman named Edie . . . who happened to live inside a suburban single dad named Calvin Granger.

  Last June, Granger had helplessly watched his young daughter drown in a fierce Lake Michigan undertow. Unable to swim, he was incapable of saving her.

  Weeks later, mired in frustration and anguish and the brunt of his grieving ex-wife’s fury, he picked up a hooker. That was not unusual behavior for him. What happened after that was.

  The woman’s nude, mutilated body was found just after dawn in Washington Park, electrical cable wrapped around her neck. A few days later, another corpse turned up in the park. And then a third.

  Streetwalking and violent crime go hand in hand; the Southside’s slain hookers were, sadly, business as usual for the jaded cops assigned to that particular case.

  For urban reporters, as well. Chicago was in the midst of a series of flash floods this summer; the historic weather eclipsed the coverage of the Southside Strangler in the local press. That, in retrospect, was probably a very good thing. The media spotlight tends to feed a killer’s ego—and his bloodlust.

  Only when the Strangler claimed a fourth victim—an upper-middle-class mother of three living a respectable lifestyle—did the case become front-page news. That was when the cops called in the FBI.

  For Vic, every lost life carries equal weight. His heart went out to the distraught parents he met in Chicago, parents who lost their daughters twice: first to drugs and the streets, and ultimately to the monster who murdered them.

  The monster, like most killers, had once been a victim himself.

  It was a textbook case: Granger had been severely abused—essentially tortured—as a child. The MPD was, in essence, a coping mechanism. As an adult, he suffered occasional, inexplicable episodes of amnesia, particularly during times of overwhelming stress.

  He genuinely seemed to have no memory of anything “he” had said or done while Edie or one of the other, nonviolent alters—alternative personalities—were in control of him.

  “By the way,” Annabelle cuts into Vic’s thoughts, “I hear birthday wishes are in order.”

  Surprised, he tells her, “Actually, it was last month—while I was in Chicago.”

  “Ah, so your party was belated, then.”

  His party. This past Saturday night, Kitty surprised him by assembling over two dozen guests—family, friends, colleagues—at his favorite restaurant near Dupont Circle.

  Feeling a little guilty that Annabelle wasn’t invited, he informs her, “I wouldn’t call it a party. It was more like . . . it was just dinner, really. My wife planned it.”

  But then, even if Vic himself had been in charge of the guest list, Supervisory Special Agent Wyatt would not have been on it.

  Some of his colleagues are also personal friends. She isn’t one of them.

  It’s not that he has anything against no-nonsense women. Hell, he married one.

  And he respects Annabelle just as much as—or maybe even more than—just about anyone else here. He just doesn’t necessarily like her much—and he suspects the feeling is mutual.

  “I hear that it was an enjoyable evening,” she tells him with a crisp nod, and he wonders if she’s wistful. She doesn’t sound it—or look it. But for the first time, it occurs to Vic that her apparent social isolation might not always be by choice.

  He shifts his weight in his chair. “It’s my wife’s thing, really. Kitty’s big on celebrations. She’ll go all out for any occasion. Years ago, she threw a party when she potty trained the twins.”

  As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he wants to take them back—and not just because mere seconds ago he was insisting that Saturday night was not a party. Annabelle isn’t the kind of person with whom you discuss children, much less potty training them. She doesn’t have a family, but if she did, Vic is certain she’d keep the details—particularly the bathroom details—to herself.

  Well, too bad. I’m a family man.

  After Annabelle bids him a stiff good night and disappears down the corridor, Vic shifts his gaze to the framed photos on his desk. One is of him and Kitty on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary last year; the other, more recent, shows Vic with all four of the kids at the high school graduation last June of his twin daughters.

  The girls left for college a few weeks ago. He and Kitty are empty-nesters now—well, Kitty pretty much rules the roost, as she likes to say, since Vic is gone so often.

  “So which is it—a nest or a roost?” he asked her the other day, to which she dryly replied, “Neither. It’s a coop, and you’ve been trying to fly it for years, but you just keep right on finding your way back, don’t you.”

  She was teasing, of course. No one supports Vic’s career as wholeheartedly as Kitty does, no matter how many nights it’s taken him away from home over the years. It was her idea in the first place that he put aside his planned career as a psychiatrist in favor of the FBI.

  All because of a series of murders that terrorized New York thirty years ago, and captivated a young local college psych major.

  “Back when I first met him, Vic was obsessed with unsolved murders,” Kitty announced on Saturday night when she stood up to toast him at his birthday dinner, “and since then, he’s done an incredible job solving hundreds of them.”

  True—with one notable exception.

  Years ago, the New York killings stopped abruptly. Vic would like to think it’s because the person who committed them is no longer on this earth.

  If by chance he is, then he’s almost certainly been sidelined by illness or incarceration for some unrelated crime.

  After all, while there are exceptions to every rule, most serial killers don’t just stop. Everything Vic has learned over the years about their habits indicates that once something triggers a person to cross the fine line that divides disturbed human beings from cunning predators, he’s compelled to keep feeding his dark fantasies until, God willing, something—or someone—stops him.

  In a perfect world, Vic is that someone.

  But then, a perfect world wouldn’t be full of disturbed people who are, at any given moment, teetering on the brink of reality.

  Typically, all it takes is a single life stressor to push one over the edge. It can be any devastating event, really—a car accident, job loss, bankruptcy, a terminal diagnosis, a child’s drowning . . .

  Stressors like those can create considerable challenges for a mentally healthy person. But when fate inflicts that kind of pressu
re on someone who’s already dangerously unbalanced . . . well, that’s how killers are born.

  Though Vic has encountered more than one homicidal maniac whose spree began with a wife’s infidelity, the triggering crisis doesn’t necessarily have to hit close to home. Even a natural disaster can be prime breeding ground.

  A few years ago in Los Angeles, a seemingly ordinary man—a fine, upstanding Boy Scout leader—went off the deep end after the Northridge earthquake leveled his apartment building. Voices in his head told him to kill three strangers in the aftermath, telling him they each, in turn, were responsible for the destruction of his home.

  Seemingly ordinary. Ah, you just never know. That’s what makes murderers—particularly serial murderers—so hard to catch. They aren’t always troubled loners; sometimes they’re hiding in plain sight: regular people, married with children, holding steady jobs . . .

  And sometimes, they’re suffering from a mental disorder that plenty of people—including some in the mental health profession—don’t believe actually exists.

  Before Vic left Chicago, as he was conducting a jailhouse interview with Calvin Granger, Edie took over Calvin’s body.

  The transition occurred without warning, right before Vic’s incredulous eyes. Everything about the man changed—not just his demeanor, but his physical appearance and his voice. A doctor was called in, and attested that even biological characteristics like heart rate and vision had been altered. Calvin could see twenty-twenty. Edie was terribly nearsighted. Stunning.

  It wasn’t that Calvin believed he was an entirely different person, a woman named Edie—he was Edie. Calvin had disappeared into some netherworld, and when he returned, he had no inkling of what had just happened, or even that time had gone by.

  The experience would have convinced even a die-hard skeptic, and it chilled Vic to the bone.

  Case closed, yes—but this one is going to give him nightmares for a long time to come.

  Vic tidies his desk and finds himself thinking fondly of the old days at the bureau—and a colleague who was Annabelle Wyatt’s polar opposite.

  John O’Neill became an agent around the same time Vic did. Their career paths, however, took them in different directions: Vic settled in with the BSU, while O’Neill went from Quantico to Chicago and back, then on to New York, where he eventually became chief of the counterterrorism unit. Unfortunately, his career with the bureau ended abruptly a few weeks ago amid a cloud of controversy following the theft—on his watch—of a briefcase containing sensitive documents.

  When it happened, Vic was away. Feeling the sudden urge to reconnect, he searches through his desk for his friend’s new phone number, finds it, dials it. A secretary and then an assistant field the call, and finally, John comes on the line.

  “Hey, O’Neill,” Vic says, “I just got back from Chicago and I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Shattuck! How the hell are you? Happy birthday. Sorry I couldn’t make it Saturday night.”

  “Yeah, well . . . I’m sure you have a good excuse.”

  “Valerie dragged me to another wedding. You know how that goes.”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . how’s the new job?”

  “Cushy,” quips O’Neill, now chief of security at the World Trade Center in New York City. “How’s the big 5–0?”

  “Not cushy. You’ll find out soon enough, won’t you?”

  “February. Don’t remind me.”

  Vic shakes his head, well aware that turning fifty, after everything O’Neill has dealt with in recent months, will be a mere blip.

  They chat for a few minutes, catching up, before O’Neill says, “Listen, I’ve got to get going. Someone’s waiting for me.”

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “My business is always a pleasure, Vic. Don’t you know that by now?”

  “Where are you off to tonight?”

  “I’m having drinks with Bob Tucker at Windows on the World to talk about security for this place, and it’s a Monday night, so . . .”

  “Elaine’s.” Vic is well aware of his friend’s long-standing tradition.

  “Right. How about you?”

  “It’s a Monday night, so—”

  “Football.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a date with the couch and remote. Giants are opening their season—and the Yankees are playing the Red Sox, too. Clemens is pitching. Looks like I’ll be channel surfing.”

  “I wouldn’t get too excited about that baseball game if I were you, Vic. It’s like a monsoon here.”

  A rained-out Yankees-Red Sox game on one of Vic’s rare nights at home in front of the TV would be a damned shame. Especially since he made a friendly little wager with Rocky Manzillo, his lifelong friend, who had made the trip down from New York this weekend for Vic’s birthday dinner.

  Always a guy who liked to rock the boat, Rocky is also a lifelong Red Sox fan, despite having grown up in Yankees territory. He still lives there, too—he’s a detective with the NYPD.

  In the grand scheme of Vic Shattuck’s life, old pals and baseball rivalries and homemade macaroni casseroles probably matter more than they should. He’s rarely around to enjoy simple pleasures. When he is, they help him forget that somewhere out there, a looming stressor is going to catapult yet another predator from the shadows to wreak violent havoc on innocent lives.

  September 10, 2001

  New York City

  6:40 P.M.

  “Hey, watch where you’re going!”

  Unfazed by the disgruntled young punk, Jamie continues shoving through the sea of pedestrians, baby carriages, and umbrellas, trying to make it to the corner before the light changes.

  Around the slow-moving elderly couple, the dog on a leash, a couple of puddle-splashing kids in bright yellow slickers and rubber boots . . .

  Failing to make the light, Jamie silently curses them all. Or maybe not silently, because a prim-looking woman flashes a disapproving look. Hand coiled into a fist, Jamie stands waiting in the rain, watching endless traffic zip past.

  The subway would have been the best way to go, but there were track delays. And God knows you can’t get a stinking cab in Manhattan in weather like this.

  Why does everything have to be such a struggle here?

  Everything, every day.

  A few feet away, a passing SUV blasts its deafening horn.

  Noise . . .

  Traffic . . .

  People . . .

  How much more can I take?

  Jamie rakes a hand through drenched hair and fights the reckless urge to cross against the light.

  That’s what it’s been about lately. Reckless urges. Day in, day out.

  For so long, I’ve been restrained by others; now that I’m free, I have to constantly restrain myself? It’s so unfair.

  Why can’t I just cross the damned street and go where I need to go?

  Why can’t I just do whatever the hell I feel like doing? I’ve earned it, haven’t I?

  Jamie steps off the curb and hears someone call, “Hey, look out!” just before a monstrous double city bus blows past, within arm’s reach.

  “Geez, close call.”

  Jamie doesn’t acknowledge the bystander’s voice; doesn’t move, just stands staring into the streaming gutter.

  It would be running red with blood if you got hit.

  Or if someone else did.

  It would be so easy to turn around, pick out some random stranger, and with a quick, hard shove, end that person’s life. Jamie could do that. It would happen so unexpectedly no one would be able to stop it.

  Jamie can feel all those strangers standing there, close enough to touch.

  Which of them would you choose?

  The prune-faced, disapproving biddy?

  One of the splashing kids?

  The elderly woman, or her husband?

  Just imagine the victim, the chosen one, crying out in surprise, helplessly falling, getting slammed by several tons of speeding steel and dying right there in
the gutter.

  Yes, blood in the gutter.

  Eyes closed, Jamie can see it clearly—so much blood at first, thick and red right here where the accident will happen. But then the gutter water will sweep it along, thin it out as it merges with wide, deep puddles and with falling rain, spread it in rivulets that will reach like fingers down alleys and streets . . .

  Imagine all the horror-struck onlookers, the traumatized driver of the death car, the useless medics who will rush to the scene and find that there’s nothing they can do . . .

  Nothing anyone can do.

  And somewhere, later, phones will ring as family members and friends get the dreaded call.

  Just think of all the people who will be touched—tainted—by the blood in the street, by that one simple act.

  I can do that.

  I can choose someone to die.

  I’ve done it before—twice.

  Ah, but not really. Technically, Jamie didn’t do the choosing. Both victims—the first ten years ago, the second, maybe ten days ago—had done the choosing; they’d chosen to commit the heinous acts that had sealed their own fates. Jamie merely saw that they got what they deserved.

  This time, though, it would have to be different. It would have to be a stranger.

  Would it be as satisfying to snuff out a life that has no real meaning in your own?

  Would it be even better?

  Would it—

  Someone jostles Jamie from behind.

  The throng is pressing forward. The traffic has stopped moving past; the light has changed.

  Jamie crosses the street, hand still clenched into an angry fist.

  An Excerpt from

  SLEEPWALKER

  Glenhaven Park, Westchester County, New York

  Sunday, September 11, 2011

  Her husband has suffered from insomnia all his life, but tonight, Allison MacKenna is the one who can’t sleep.

  Lying on her side of the king-sized bed in their master bedroom, she listens to the quiet rhythm of her own breathing, the summery chatter of crickets and night birds beyond the window screen, and the faint hum of the television in the living room downstairs.

  Mack is down there, stretched out on the couch. When she stuck her head in about an hour ago to tell him she was going to bed, he was watching Animal House on cable.