The joys of a clear, cold night in late autumn are never as obvious as when one is standing in open ground with a telescope on a tripod looking up at the heavens. The man loved autumn and winter more than any other time of the year, and a night like this was reason enough to be alive. He was aware of the chill, but it was on the periphery of things, distant enough not to intrude on his most immediate concerns. And his most pressing concern was, without a doubt, Jupiter.
It would have been hard to explain to someone who had never looked at the skies without anything other than the naked eye the shock, the delight, and the reverence the man had felt the first time he had seen Jupiter when he was a boy. The thing was, his grandfather had said, planets were so far away that we only saw them as tiny points of light—privately the boy had thought that even being a tiny point of light in the sky was pretty impressive—but Jupiter was another story. Jupiter was so vast that even with the plainest kind of binoculars you would be able to see more than a point: you would see a surface like the smallest, brightest coin you could imagine, suspended in the black. And what was best, the grandfather had continued—like a conspirator sharing secrets—was that Jupiter had moons, many moons, and the four larger ones you could see right there and then.
The boy had looked through the binoculars, struggling at first, and then there it was: not a nondescript speck but a reddish smudge—an actual smudge!—and four dots aligned around it. A different world with mountains and valleys and moons, out there in the infinite, fathomless universe.
The man had never really gotten used to it, however many times he had observed Jupiter, and he had done so with increasingly sophisticated technology. Other planets and constellations had been customarily examined and tracked, but none had touched him in quite the same way, because Jupiter was the one that had first revealed its secret to him: the universe was a fabric of visible and invisible matter held together by gravity and trajectory. He wouldn’t have used those words when he was a boy, but even then he would have understood the sentiment. Something that was too far away for us to see—maybe even something hidden behind something else—was still an integral part of the fabric, because it affected everything else and the celestial harmony wouldn’t have been the same without it.
The man looked into his telescope and adjusted the focus: he too was part of the celestial harmony, he reflected, even if he was for the most part invisible to all others. A night like this could not be wasted indoors. It was as good an opportunity as any to mingle with the rest of humankind—such as it was.
The park was not as free of light pollution as other spots farther away from the city, but for the time being it was enough. A number of others had thought along the same lines and odd groups of stargazers were busy with their kits and portable tables, with thermoses and travel mugs. Some of those people he had noticed on other occasions. There was the couple in their late fifties with the latest Meade telescope and the smart camping gear. There was the noisy, scrabbling astronomy class of teenagers who were more interested in each other than in the heavens. Somewhere to the man’s left there was a couple and he watched them as he pretended to adjust his Autostar hand controller. The boyfriend was stocky and the girlfriend taller and willowy and—how very interesting—tonight they had been arguing. It was obvious in the way they moved around each other—a sort of rigid dance around the tripod, where every movement was spiked with conflict. Their voices, he noted with pleasure, were muted and their exchanges curt.
The man did not study them because he was attracted to either: his attention was on the cloud of tension and strain that appeared to emanate from them. That, he liked very much. And he was extremely adept at reading the story of their disagreement: whatever had happened, the girlfriend had started it and the boyfriend was sulking.
The man looked away and returned to his eyepiece. He had only so much of his time to give them if all they were doing was stomping about like sullen adolescents. His eyes feasted on Jupiter—tonight he could see all four moons—for as long as he could and then he began to pack things up and head back to his car.
He noticed the dog barking as he was walking across the long stretch of grass toward the parking lot. It was a yappy, annoying bark and no doubt it belonged to some small, impossibly aggravating beast that had been left in the car while the owners stargazed. What he should do, he thought, is let the dog out and let it run away. With any luck, the shrill sound the creature created would be lost with him.
As the man approached the lot he saw why the dog was barking. A boy—no older than four—was standing one foot away from the car window, watching it with curiosity and no fear. The dog—the man couldn’t tell what breed it was—was launching itself at the window as if the continued existence of humanity depended on its defending the car. There was slobber on the inside of the glass and the small paws clawed hard against the door.
The man looked back toward the field: someone must have lost this child, someone must be looking for him. For the briefest moment he considered whether he should take him, just lift him clear off the concrete and put him in his trunk. Then again, what would he do with a child? And wouldn’t people have seen him on the field anyway?
The boy placed his little hand against the window and at that point the dog really lost it.
The man crouched next to the boy. “Not a very nice dog, is it?”
The boy looked up and shook his head.
The man could see that the car was unlocked. Sweet Jesus, who leaves the car unlocked these days? He could open the door and let the dog out, see what would happen with the kid. See if the silly dog was all bark and no bite. The man was wearing gloves and it would just be a dreadful incident and a combination of bad luck and neglect. Or even better . . .
He looked at the boy and then at the snarling dog. “Would you like me to kill it?” he said. His voice was so calm he could have been asking for the boy’s name.
If the child was surprised by his question he did not show it, and the man was pleased by the intense regard with which he seemed to be pondering the issue. The dog continued his barking and, way back in the field, the man heard raised voices and someone calling out.
“We don’t have that much time, my friend. Would you like me to kill the dog?”
The boy gave it another moment of consideration then shook his head.
“As you wish,” the man said and he left.
By the time he reached his car a few rows away he heard a woman calling out to the boy and his whiny reply to her. He waited for the mother to scoop the boy up and take him back to the field and only then did he turn the key and make the engine come to life. What would he have done if the boy had said yes? No question about it: breaking the dog’s neck would hardly have been tougher than breaking the child’s.
The man had lived in the Queen Anne neighborhood in Seattle for the last five years and, as always, when he drove home his eyes found any windows that were lit, with curtains open, and whatever scraps of life he could glimpse. People honestly believed that locking their doors at night meant that they were safe and secure, that what they owned and who they were was protected, when in fact their whole existence was open for scrutiny anytime someone with motivation and the right skills came along. And the man had both.
He would never be so silly as to do that in his own neighborhood, but in other areas of the city—and southwest Seattle was perfect, with its green yards that sloped into the water and the thickets of trees between the houses—the man loved to go prospecting.
It had started one summer day when he was eleven and playing—alone—in his tree house. It was a rickety thing that his father had built for him in the spring, hoping that it would entice him to invite some school friends over to play. What it did for the boy, though, was give him leave to be happily entrenched in his very own command post, examining the neighbors’ backyards and gazing unseen into their homes. It was a hot summer, windows were open, and he saw much more of the couple next door than he would have expected,
or hoped.
The sex wasn’t particularly interesting—though he knew that there were kids in school who would have courted his friendship for a chance to come up to his tree house at just the right time. What took his interest, what drew him back there evening after evening between dinner and bedtime, was that Mr. Hendricks had slapped his wife. His parents were a quiet, contented couple who never even raised their voices to each other but Mr. Hendricks, who worked for the county and washed his car in his driveway on Sunday, had slapped his wife hard across the face one evening—out of the blue—when she had said something that had been too faint for the boy to hear. It had been an ugly, jagged movement that had caught both the woman and the boy by surprise and, while she held her hand to her cheek, the boy had looked on, mesmerized and greedy, drinking in the foul gleam in the husband’s eyes and the shock and hurt in the wife’s.
It happened four times in all that summer—at least, those were the times he had been able to watch them hidden in the tree house. When his mother announced at the beginning of October that she had seen the wife leave in a small U-Haul van driven by another man and packed with her belongings, his parents had commented on how the neighbors had seemed so happy only one week earlier, as they had exchanged jokes from their respective stoops. But the boy knew then that people’s lives are mysteries and no one knows what goes on in another person’s heart even if they live three feet away from you.
The husband moved away four months later and, to the boy’s disappointment, a boring if cheerful family moved in—two dull, unimaginative parents and one pathetic little girl who tried to make friends with him.
As an adult, what his life lacked in personal relationships he more than made up for with the collection of information, insights, and private affairs that he had gleaned through what he liked to call “craft” and “art.” He had learned early the techniques that helped him achieve the results he wanted. However, the fact that the fallouts had a kind of particular beauty, that was art.
His home was a smallish, pretty house in a residential street lined by similar houses and it would have attracted no undue attention—he had made sure of that. Keep things nice, but not ostentatiously so; never buy a big flashy car, only something that may be instantly forgotten. And so it was with his neighbors: he was careful to be polite and friendly, but he never got personal. He doubted that they could have picked him out of a lineup—he loved that phrase.
By the time he got home the street was quiet. He unloaded the telescope and the rest of his gear from the trunk and let himself in. He turned on the light in the spotless kitchen and made himself a chicken-and-ham sandwich with French mustard, which he had with a beer while watching Letterman. Not a particularly good night, he thought—then again, a middling night with Letterman was still better than most other stuff.
After he ran hot water over the plate he had used, he washed his hands with the special moisturizing soap that he bought at the drugstore and dried them carefully with a clean hand towel. His second bedroom looked like a guest room, though no guest had ever stayed, nor indeed would ever do so. His third bedroom, looking out onto the backyard and the tall trees, was his office, and there his heart truly lived.
It was the largest room and the one where he spent most of his hours. During the day it was bright and airy and at night he could occasionally see clumps of stars above the tree line, clearly enough to engage his interest. It was his office, his playroom, and the place where all his dreams began.
The man went to a small table on the side and switched on the desk lamp. There had been much work to do, but he was almost ready and this was his reward. He slipped on a double layer of latex gloves, stood by the floor-to-ceiling bookcase and chose a tome.
Under the pool of light from the lamp he found the page he needed, picked up his box cutter, and sliced a thin strip off the page. A cigar case inside a clear plastic bag sat on the corner of the table and inside it other priceless fragments of his life waited to be delivered to the next home.
Chapter 27
Alice Madison woke up early that Saturday morning after a night of broken sleep and unsettling dreams that she could not remember. She dragged herself under the shower and made coffee strong enough to keep her awake until the new year. She was not surprised; she had known it would happen sooner or later, but meeting Nathan Quinn again unexpectedly after all that time was disorienting and she still felt caught out.
She could not afford to think about it, though: decisions had been made, they had both moved on. And that, she said to herself with a finality she wished she felt, was that.
She rummaged in her closet and found the boots she would need for the wedding the following day. They looked clean enough for regular use, but for that kind of event she’d have to spend some time tonight brushing and polishing. Madison sighed. Beware of all enterprises that require clean boots.
She forced down some breakfast—oatmeal—just for the ritual of making it before leaving the house. Her mind was on the picture of the fake HVAC man that had been released to the public. After the car engine started she switched on the radio and waited for the breakfast news. She was ready for anything that might be thrown in about her lack of experience, or any smears on her capabilities. They wouldn’t make her day any better, but—what the heck—she had bigger fish to fry.
The neighborhood was quiet as she drove off, her thoughts on murder and desire.
Madison had never personally investigated a serial killer case—whatever Detective Chris Kelly might say. They are rare, though not as rare as people would like them to be. The idea of murder is repulsive to most human beings; nevertheless, some few individuals find their twisted joy in it and Madison had seen their work. She had studied it like others had scrutinized the Riemann hypothesis in mathematics. And she knew that the hardest part was going to be finding the connection between the different murders: the victims had been chosen by the killer and, as yet, they did not know whether the killings were random or not, and how the man had insinuated himself into their lives. The why was clear enough: his pleasure lay in the damaged bodies of Matthew Duncan and Peter Mitchell.
Pale shimmers of sun were caught in the skyscrapers downtown as Madison drove on the West Seattle Bridge and then onto I-5. Unwittingly her thoughts went back to the previous evening’s meeting. Quinn’s idea had been spot on: they needed to find all of the killer’s handiwork and the best way was to go through the list of murderers who had appealed their convictions and maintained their innocence. Madison felt a tiny bit better; there were things they could do, avenues they could pursue. Unless they had a sense of what kind of man they were hunting, they would only be stumbling around in the dark.
The news came on the radio and Madison turned up the volume. It was the first item: the broadcaster spoke about the recent development in the Duncan case and said that there was now a sketch by a forensic artist that pictured a man the police were eager to contact. Madison was glad that her name had not been mentioned even once—although she was sure that, if they didn’t come up with something more tangible than a sketch soon, it’d be out there every time right after the words gruesome murder.
Brown walked in with two coffees as per their ritual and put one on her desk.
“Thank you,” Madison said and went straight to the point. “You know about the correlation and escalation between voyeurism, breaking and entering, and violent sexual crimes?”
“Good morning and yes, I do,” Brown replied.
“Our man is a watcher, but there isn’t any sexual element to his murders.”
“How do you know he is a watcher?” Brown took off his coat and sat down.
“He must be. He knew when the housekeeper would be in the house, the name of the HVAC company, and the color of their uniforms. He knew when the wife went out for her run every day. The cigar case was found buried near the spot that’s perfect for observing the house and—and this is the most important part—it takes time to do all this. He must have invested a lot
of time and energy in the collecting of all this information. That’s his turn-on. He enjoys it.”
Brown sat back in his chair and considered that angle. “You’re saying that he has all the characteristics of a voyeur but without the sexual element.”
“Exactly.”
“And his payoff . . .”
“. . . is the violence,” Madison said. “Knowing how far he can go and getting away with it. It’s power, control, and an unmistakable eff off to the rest of us. Well, especially us.”
“He must have gotten pretty close to Mitchell and Karasick too, to know what he knew about them,” Brown said.
Madison nodded. How close did he get to them? How close did he need to get to them?
She picked up the phone, dialed the number she had found online earlier, and hoped someone would pick up at the other end.
“Hello,” a man’s voice replied just as she thought it would go to message.
In the background Madison could hear the sound of at least three children squabbling over what might have been breakfast. “This is Detective Madison from Seattle Homicide,” she said.
“Yes,” the man said, and there was hesitation there, the kind that is born out of the expectation of bad news.
“Is this Mr. Saul Garner, from the Release Project Northwest?”
“It is.”
“I need to speak with you with a degree of urgency regarding an open case. Could you meet me in your office later?”
“What is this about? Is it one of the appeals? I don’t understand.”
“No, it’s not, and I appreciate that it is Saturday. But I really need to speak with you and I’d rather not do it on the telephone.”
The noise from the children in the background had reached rock stadium level and Madison heard Garner move away to another room.
“What is this about?” he repeated, and she could tell that he was not upset about the intrusion into his weekend but was genuinely concerned.
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