by Oliver Stark
‘Thanks for coming back,’ said Denise.
‘It wasn’t from choice.’
‘You looked wasted,’ she said.
‘Is that a pick-up line?’ said Harper. ‘I’m feeling a warm glow of appreciation.’
Denise smiled. ‘You sleep at all?’
‘No.’
‘What’s keeping you up?’
‘Same thing that’s got you wired.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s a glint in your eye the size of a two-carat diamond.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘The story’s got to you, too, hasn’t it? Everyone’s wired.’
‘No, not me,’ she lied. ‘I’m just good in the mornings.’
‘So tell me how a well-presented woman like yourself got her fingertips so grubby.’
Denise looked down at the newsprint on her fingers. ‘Okay, I took a look.’
‘You took a look? I bet. I looked you up, Dr Levene. I know your research interests. Must’ve felt like your lucky day.’
‘Don’t insult me, Detective.’
‘You saying your little heart didn’t do a flip?’
‘I’m interested, all right? I’ve worked these cases.’
‘Worked or studied them? There’s a big difference between tracking a live killer and reading the court reports.’
‘I know that.’
‘Sure you do, you know everything.’
‘Stop busting my balls, Harper. I’m on your side.’
‘No, Doctor, you’re on your own side. If you were on mine, you’d let me get out there. There are a thousand places I’d rather be than wasting both of our time pretending you can fix people’s brains.’
‘You like being angry, don’t you?’
‘I don’t think about it.’
‘Lisa did, is my guess. I bet she thought about it a lot. Women do.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You lost your wife. Are you not curious as to why she fell out of love with you?’
‘No, I know why. My job came first, and she didn’t like that.’
‘That’s a nice clean theory, isn’t it? Your wife left you because you’re a dedicated public servant.’
‘Cop work stinks, everybody knows that.’
‘You buy that yourself or is it just for my consumption?’
‘Jesus, you don’t let up, do you? Does your husband get a word in?’
‘A good detective would know I’m not married.’
‘A great one wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about your marital status.’
‘And what are you, good or great?’
‘I’m neither, but sometimes I get lucky.’
‘Modest too?’
‘We’re a team. You don’t solve a murder as a lone wolf. There’s over a hundred detectives working the case.’
‘Let’s get back to the case of Tom Harper. I’ve got him down as a hero-fantasist, how does that feel?’
‘Like an insult that fell flat on the floor.’
‘Okay, we can keep this going all day, but you’ve got a problem with aggression and I can help you.’
‘Boxing helped me. It gave me an outlet, but I’m too old for the ring now.’
‘So you start on your superiors?’
‘He went for me first.’
‘Because?’
‘Because he made fun of Lisa.’
‘And that got to you?’
‘Sure.’
‘Why did it matter what he thought?’
‘You don’t know? Come on. I loved Lisa. She left without warning. I was blown wide open. I was an explosion looking for a detonator. Cracking the Romario case should’ve been the best moment of my life, but all I got was an empty apartment and a phone message telling me not to call.’
‘You must’ve seen it coming?’
‘Every couple argues. You never know it’s terminal until too late. I thought the arguments were part of the working out, but they were more than that for her.’
‘And now? Angry still?’
‘It makes less sense the clearer I see it, so the anger seems to get worse.’
‘Would you like to know why she left?’
‘Sure would, and what she says sounds like a load of soft soap.’
‘What does she tell you?’
‘She tells me that she’s not good enough. She tells me that she can’t live up to my expectations. She tells me she thinks she makes me unhappy.’
‘They’re well-considered explanations. Sounds like she doesn’t want to hurt you.’
‘Well, she’s not doing so well at that.’
‘More to the point, she doesn’t know how to tell you the truth.’
‘So what’s the truth, Doctor?’
‘I don’t think you’re angry because Lisa left. I think she left because you’re always angry.’
Tom paused. He let the idea work around his head for a moment. ‘She was scared of me?’
‘You’re a tough guy, you have high expectations, you work in a highly stressful environment and you don’t give yourself an inch. I’d say you were so caught up in that cycle that she became one of the wheels in your life that needed ordering about. Maybe she wasn’t scared, maybe she just felt like a piece of shit.’
Tom’s face drained of colour. This was worse than he had imagined. He had thought the good psychologist might gently prise some truths from beneath his skin, not land a knock-out combination on his second visit. ‘She felt like shit?’
‘I don’t know. I’m guessing, but your reaction tells me something important. You felt like you treated her badly, didn’t you?’
Tom looked at the floor. Shit, Levene was good at this. Against his will, he nodded to the floor.
‘What triggers the anger, Tom? You have an idea, or you just feel it late on and it catches you out? You’ve got a quick mind, and that means you’re good at hiding the signs from yourself.’
Tom chewed the idea over for a moment. ‘Maybe I just don’t like the way people talk about things that matter.’
‘You don’t think they’re free to say what the hell they like?’
‘No, I don’t. Not at all.’
‘Well, I got news for you, they are. They can say any damn thing they like, but it isn’t what they say that riles you.’
‘What is it?’
‘You like watching birds, don’t you? You ever see a hawk trying to get a lure from his flyer?’
‘Sure.’
‘You see how the hawk will use all kinds of strategies to surprise the flyer so that he’s not seen until the last moment?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s how the mind works. It catches you out, and the anger keeps you from seeing what’s really there.’
‘And what’s really there?’
‘That’s what we’ve got to find out. But we’ve got to do it together.’ Dr Levene let the silence hang in the air. ‘You want to be helped or are you seriously just here because you need to be?’
Harper had been thinking. He looked up at her. ‘You think you can help?’
‘I can try, if you’ll let me.’
‘I never thought I’d say this, but okay, I’ll give it a go.’
‘You’ve surprised me,’ said Dr Levene. ‘Why the change of heart?’
‘I need help.’
‘That’s a serious admission. I’m impressed.’
‘Not for me, Doctor, for chrissake, for the case. You’re good at what you do, I can see that right away. You’ve also done more research on serial killers than I’ve ever heard of and if I need to do one thing it’s to get to understand this killer’s mind. I don’t think I can do it alone.’
‘What are you saying? You’re asking for my help on the case?’ Denise couldn’t disguise the excitement she felt and her voice lifted an octave.
‘Calm down and listen. From the moment this story went to press, this just got a whole lot more difficult. The American Devil is going to be reacting
to his own drives and, also, the way the press report it. And on top of that, it gets very messy with the media and politics involved, but if this guy’s going to be caught I need to see things clearly. I think you can help, Doctor — you’ve got good eyes for how people tick.’
‘Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.’
‘So the deal is, I’ll talk about myself and do what I’m told, if you let me talk about this killer’s behaviour and tell me if I’m on the right lines, psychologically speaking.’
Denise nodded slowly. ‘So tell me, how’s the investigation going? You got anything to go on?’
Harper shot her a sidelong glance. ‘This won’t be a nice conversation. There’s a bitch of a killer out there and he’s beginning to feel confident. He took out a woman on a Saturday afternoon. That’s quite some self-belief he’s got. The thing is, he looks uncontrolled and random but he’s left nothing for us to go on at all. He’s actually very well organized and very smart. He seems to know exactly what a cop would look for.’
Denise was taking notes as he spoke. Harper paused and stared at her pen. She looked up. ‘You want help, this is how I do it, on paper.’
‘Okay,’ said Harper. ‘Now the thing for me is that he’s focusing on rich society girls. We got a hell of a lot more groundwork to do to find out why, and time’s running short.’
‘What’s his motive?’
‘Good question.’ Harper looked up from the glass he was twisting in his hand. ‘I think his motive isn’t just to hurt these women. I don’t know. I think he wants to make a hell of a statement about something. He wants attention and he’s going to get it now Erin Nash is feeding the public, but there’s so much groundwork to do. There are hundreds of patients from Manhattan State who need to be assessed and interviewed and there are hundreds of witness statements that we’re not getting through properly. They don’t correlate. The whole thing is swimming in detail and I got to figure out one or two angles.’
‘What about a profile?’
‘Yeah, we’ve tried that. We’ve sent the packages over to the Feds for Mary-Jane and Grace and they came up with a pen portrait based on the first two victims. Then the MO changed — you know, he took someone out by day, he changed his trophy from eyes and hair to heart — and the Feds got nervous and withdrew the profile. They don’t know which way to jump, so they’re just sitting on it, afraid of getting it wrong and getting the blame. Now the press is breathing fire they’ll be even more careful.’
‘I think the profile looks stable to me — three similar victims, three similar attacks. Don’t you think that the change reflects changed circumstances rather than a change of personality?’
Harper looked up from the glass again. ‘Yeah, I think so. Anyhow, you’ve got a head full of good questions there, Dr Levene, but now I got to go. I’ve got to see how this Nash lady got her information.’
‘Okay,’ said Levene. ‘I’ll help with the investigation, but if I’m also going to help you, then the first thing you’ve got to do for me is notice just how many times you get riled. You keep a note of that and I can begin to work.’
‘How the hell do I monitor that?’
Denise took out a small green elastic wrist strap. ‘You wear this on your wrist and whenever you have an angry thought just give it a twang. I just want you to see how often your mind takes a walk down that particular avenue.’ She handed him the band. He took it and looked at it suspiciously.
‘You are fucking kidding me.’
‘Think of it as an investigation into your own psyche. It’s not medicine, it’s a form of information-gathering.’
Harper stood up and pocketed the elastic strap. ‘I’ll see what I can do, Doctor.’
Chapter Eighteen
Blue Team
November 18, 3.48 p.m.
Mark Garcia hurried across to Harper as he walked into the Major Investigation Room and handed him a blue manila folder. ‘Report you wanted, Harper. They just completed the walkabout. It tallies with Amy’s credit card records. Nothing unusual that we could see. But I know you wanted it soon as.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’ Harper took the folder and returned to his desk. There was a little postcard sitting on his keyboard. Harper picked it up. It had a picture of Muhammad Ali in his younger days and a quotation below it.
Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them — a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.
Harper turned over the card. He read the scrawl of black ink. Good to have you back, champ. We know you have the will but we hope the skill will come later. Eddie.
Harper smiled and stuck the postcard on his monitor. ‘Nice to be back, Eddie,’ he said aloud.
He poured himself a coffee and caught up with the latest news coming in from the various arms of the investigation. With three kills, they had hundreds of interviews to get through, as well as a wealth of forensic data to process. Harper looked in at the office set up to deal with tip-offs from the public. A team of five men and women were sitting with headphones speaking into their mics. Harper caught one girl’s eye. ‘How’s it going?’ he mouthed. The girl pointed to the whiteboard by the door. They’d set up a tally for day one. Three columns. Confessions, Leads and Irrelevant. They had 132 irrelevants, 207 confessions and zero leads. Harper nodded. It was always the way. But still, if the cops were honest, a case like this needed a tip-off from a member of the public. Someone somewhere must’ve seen something.
Down the hallway, the press team were putting together information for the public. This would lead to a reconstruction of each murder for TV. The more people knew about each crime the more likely it was the cops would get valuable information. As yet, the public didn’t know enough, so the only people who called were geeks and freaks.
Harper took out the report on Amy Lloyd-Gardner’s last hour on earth. They had traced her through a number of shops, all expensive designer boutiques. They had her purchases down one side. She’d bought two pairs of shoes. One from Christian Louboutin, one from Prada. She had bought a handbag and a silver Versace dress. The overall bill came to $3,900. That was a hell of a shopping trip. Harper knew that the killer might keep these items so it was important to get photographs of them for the media. Someone somewhere might see them, even be wearing them. He wrote a note on the file and tried to find anything else of value, but he couldn’t. Everyone had been interviewed but no one had spotted a guy following her. Harper wanted them to go through them all again until they had a sighting. He wrote a second note and closed the file. He took it across to Kasper.
‘I need these two things, Eddie. I need shots of all the items she bought sent through to the press and I want these interviews repeated.’
‘Repeated?’
‘Yeah, repeated.’
‘You want me to square it with Williamson?’
‘Sure, if he’s around. If not, take a couple of guys and start yourself. Last two or three shops would be the best place to start.’
‘Okay, I’m on it.’
‘And thanks for the card, Eddie. It’s good to be back.’
‘How’s the shrink?’
‘She’s not as bad as I thought.’
‘High praise.’
‘You get anywhere on Erin Nash?’
‘You bet… I got her home address for you.’ Eddie handed him a scrap of paper. Harper read it and nodded.
‘Thanks, Eddie. That’s quick work.’
Harper arrived at Erin Nash’s apartment block still feeling wired. He hadn’t asked anyone’s permission to go talk to this upstart reporter, simply because he knew he’d be refused. Up at the top of the tree, they were doing political deals and giving Nash a midnight call wouldn’t smooth proceedings. But Harper wasn’t interested in the next mayoral elections. He wanted to meet the bright spark who’d fucked up the investiga
tion for her own personal gain. Harper got out of his car and walked to her brownstone down near Greenwich Village feeling a mixture of emotions — or two separate feelings, rather: hungry and pissed off. He’d not had a bite to eat all day, and it wasn’t improving his mood. It was not a great combination but he wanted to know her source: a source who somehow knew too much and might be the key to unlock the case.
Harper went to the door and buzzed her apartment.
A bright, crisp voice replied. ‘How ya doing? Come on up!’ The door buzzed open.
Tom took a half-second to consider his actions. He went for dishonesty and the next moment was inside the building. This was further than he imagined he would get. But luck or something similar seemed to be on his side.
What was he going to do? He had no idea. He wanted the source but didn’t really know how he was going to get it.
He took the stairs up four storeys. The corridor was deserted. A little gold sign pointed him in the direction of her apartment. His back was sweating. He was more nervous than he should be. Why was that?
He got to her apartment and knocked on the door. Erin Nash, dressed in a big blue-flowered kimono, opened the door wide. ‘Hey, there,’ she said with a nice big smile. Then she saw it wasn’t the man she was expecting and her big smile vanished. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Detective Harper of NYPD North Homicide. I want to talk to you, Miss Nash.’
‘You’ve all talked to the legal team at the paper. I’m not saying anything.’
‘Well, unfortunately, that’s not possible, Miss Nash. You’re the journalist with the source and I want to know who you’ve been talking to.’
Erin smiled sweetly and tried to slam the door shut. Tom reacted immediately and pushed the door so hard it bounced off the wall and back against his outstretched hand. He was surprised by the pent-up energy. Erin stood in the doorway. She was about five foot two with jet black hair and pale skin. In her blue robe she looked scared and vulnerable.
‘Get out of here!’ she shouted, but she was moving backwards as she did.
