American Devil th&dl-1

by Oliver Stark

  ‘Everyone’s got a copy. Details worthy of note are as follows: the cause of death in the case of Jessica Pascal was asphyxiation. Plastic bag was found at the scene. The wounds mostly occurred before death. The victim had recently had sexual intercourse. Traces of semen on the body. Impossible to tell whether it was rape or they had sex and then the killer went ape. Get this — there were sixty-four separate shallow knife wounds.’

  Lol Edwards sniffed for attention. ‘ME called, she overlooked a bite mark on the left buttock. Pretty deep, too. We’ve got another teeth print. It’s the same mouth. And the lip print matches as much as they can tell.’

  ‘How did he get in?’

  ‘We’ve got sightings of Jessica in Joe’s Bar with a grey-haired man in his late thirties. We’ve also got an ID of the same guy at the girl’s Baptist church. We’re working them into sketches.’

  ‘What do you say, Tom? What are we looking at?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Well, don’t let the fake profile fool you. This is an aggressive sexual predator. Organized and ruthless. He enjoys hurting and humiliating. There’s a religious element that I don’t understand yet but he already likes to communicate. He left quotations with Amy and Jessica. The quotations are both poets, Rilke and John Milton. I’ve been up to Columbia University so we’ve got a little background. They were both visionary poets. Milton was also blind. Rilke was a radical. God knows what he’s getting at.’

  ‘Maybe he just likes poetry,’ said Eddie. ‘You know, hobbies — walking, poetry, serial killing.’

  The guys laughed as Williamson edged away from the circle with his coffee and turned to Rick Swanson. ‘How about the progress on Amy, our angel?’

  ‘We got a hit on the nail art. There’s a salon up in Harlem. Quite a low rent affair, not the kind of place a banker’s wife would be in, except, in nail art circles, it’s got Harlem kudos. Anyway, they claim the designs are theirs, but they don’t recognize her photo. So we’re still digging. They say that sometimes these high society girls get their maids to come in for designs, get a one-off and then repeat them themselves in their more upmarket beauticians.’

  ‘So, what we can conclude is that we got nothing,’ said Mark Garcia. ‘You want me to do the press release? A guy goes out on a date with a church-going virgin, doesn’t get his way so he kills the poor kid.’

  ‘Garcia, fucking button it,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Fuck you! That’s all we got.’

  The captain had entered the room during their intense conversation. No one had noticed him, but he was watching them all closely. He had some news.

  ‘Williamson, we had a caller wanting to speak to you.’ The room stopped dead.

  Williamson stood up. ‘Was it our guy?’

  ‘He said he’s got a handful of cherry blossom that he wants to shove up your ass.’

  There was a murmur of laughter throughout the room but the captain wasn’t smiling at all. The room went still for a moment.

  ‘He hung up real quick,’ said Lafayette. ‘He said he was busy, but he’d call back when he had a moment.’

  ‘Was it him?’ said Harper.

  ‘He said he’d cut Jessica sixty-four times. He said the career girl murderer only managed sixty-three. He wanted to see if he could go one better.’

  ‘No one knew that detail,’ said Harper. ‘It’s got to be him.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Blue Team Major Incident Room

  November 20, 10.55 p.m.

  The detectives from Blue Team were all crushed into the small interview room and had been ever since the news of the first call. At 10.55 p.m., the phone rang again. Williamson signalled through the big glass window into the observation room which was set up with the technical team. They patched through the call and started the trace.

  ‘Hello, this is Detective Williamson, lead detective on the American Devil murder case. How can I help?’

  There was a crackle and a pause on the line. The seven police officers in the room all held their breath.

  ‘Hello? This is Detective Williamson. Are you the man we want to speak to? You want to talk about your mistakes? You want to know how we know all about you?’

  Again there was silence. Williamson looked up at the window and shrugged. The technical guys rolled their fingers. Whoever it was, he was still on the line and Williamson needed to keep talking.

  The silence from the other end continued. Williamson started up again. ‘If you want to keep me talking, let me know you’re not just another timewaster. I get a hundred calls a days claiming to be this guy and every one is a fake. So give me something or get back into your hole and stop wasting police time.’

  The men waited. Taking a harsh position could go either way. Harper glanced at the clock. A minute had elapsed. It was good, but they hadn’t traced the call so Harper presumed it was a cell phone, probably unregistered. The only hope of getting anything was by triangulating the call. The technical guys had set it all up. They just needed to get the signal of the cell phone transmitter received by two or three base stations, then they could work out the location based on the time difference from each station. But it needed more time than tracing a traditional phone and it was fallible.

  Keep going, mouthed Harper.

  ‘Okay, Mr Silent, let’s get one or two things straight: this is my investigation.’

  ‘Shut… the… fuck… up.’ Bingo. The killer had replied. The first time they’d heard the voice. It was deep, slow and considered. A frightening voice. A voice you didn’t want to find in your apartment after dark.

  ‘You’re talking to me, then,’ said Williamson.

  ‘First things first, you fucking loser. You make claims about me in public like that again and I’ll kill two a day. I can do it and you know it. I don’t need to do all the embellishments, I can just cut and go. You get me? So less of the disrespect and lies. I have got you boys pissing your pants and sucking your fucking thumbs because you don’t know who the hell you’re dealing with. Well, let me tell you who I am. I’m not no trailer park inadequate with a fucking speech impediment. I’m an artist. One day you’ll see my grand work, The Progression of Love. It’s taken years and years to put together. Some day soon I’m going to reveal it to you all. My name’s Sebastian, and I’m an artist. I’m the American Devil. I’m Abaddon — that’s where I am. But you’ll never find me. Open the door and I’ll be gone.’

  The seven detectives stared at the small speaker. Williamson was not coming back. You could see that his head was empty. He drew some saliva back into his dry mouth. ‘Fuck you, you asshole,’ he said. It was his standard reply when he felt threatened. It was not a good move.

  ‘Okay, Detective, let’s be quite clear what we’re dealing with now. I’m in her apartment already. She is probably walking home as we speak. You can’t stop her, you can’t warn her, you can’t stop me, but you know it’s going to happen, as inevitable as the sun rising. I’ve got a blade here sitting on my lap and I’m going to dedicate this one to you boys. I’m going to give you a real show, but then again you only ever turn up after the show’s over. Like the cleaner in the movie house with your brush and scoop.’

  ‘Who is she?’ said Williamson.

  ‘I’m looking at her picture right now. Pretty girl, blue eyes, skin fine as silk. Her name, in case you’re interested, is Elizabeth. I’m going to pull her apart and put her back together again. When you see her, she’ll be transformed. It’s just the way of the world — angels become whores, whores become angels. It’s a damn shame you can’t save her. She’s going to be mine by the end of tonight. Sealed with a kiss. You know I like to do that, don’t you?’

  Tom Harper was copying out every word into his small black notebook, under the previous note, which read: Connecticut warbler, Red-eyed vireo, long-eared owl.

  It was bad news — the killer was active again. Every two days. He was in there. There was a woman returning home with no idea of what was waiting for her and there wasn’t anything they c
ould do. Harper looked at the technical staff. One guy was holding up ten fingers. They had to keep him on the line.

  Harper grabbed the phone from Williamson. ‘Sebastian, it’s Detective Harper here. Sorry for the lack of courtesy. Truth is, we haven’t got a clue who or what you are. You’ve stumped every one of us and we’re scratching our heads. We don’t know how in hell you do it. You’ve got to give us something, or you’re just pissing on us from a great height. Tell me something, you feel bad afterwards, don’t you? You pose them because you regret it and you feel bad about hurting these girls.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘You feel bad for hurting these girls, don’t you?’

  ‘A curious word, Detective, but no, I never feel bad. They feel bad, not me. They feel fucking terrible, in fact.’

  Suddenly, the dialling tone cut in. He had gone. The four technical staff could be seen leaving their seats in the next room and rushing out into the corridor. In a moment they entered the small interview room.

  ‘Did you get it?’ shouted Harper.

  The lead guy was nodding. They were all nodding.

  ‘Well, what the hell have you got?’

  ‘We’ve triangulated the signal. We’ve got an apartment block on the Upper East Side.’

  ‘Okay, let’s move,’ said Williamson.

  ‘Any more information?’ said Harper.

  ‘The trace takes us right to the Laker Building, but we can’t get any more definite. The phone’s unregistered.’

  The lead technical officer passed the read-out and address to Williamson. ‘Right,’ the detective said. ‘We’ve got an address and no time, let’s make like it matters.’

  The team bustled out of the interview room and down to the station house parking lot. The bait had worked. They had the killer on the end of their line.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Upper East Side

  November 20, 10.56 p.m.

  Elizabeth was just turning into Roma Avenue. A daddy’s girl through and through. It paid to be a daddy’s girl in her family. It got her the Upper East Side apartment, the Mercedes, and the expense account, as Daddy called it. It got her expensive clothes, expensive treatments and all the trappings of wealth — just as long as she played the virgin daughter to her preacher father.

  Hey, but she was also doing well on her own, wasn’t she? Never put a foot wrong. Straight-A student. Graduated top of her class at Princeton. But it was love she really craved tonight. Firelight, candles and strong arms. Love she wanted and love, she thought, she was going to get.

  She fished in her handbag for her entrance card, but couldn’t find it. Damn. When she reached the apartment building she signalled to Marvin, the concierge, and waited for him to release the heavy door for her, rewarding him with a smile. Marvin turned and followed her with his eyes as she headed for the lift. Elizabeth was used to attention. The elevator travelled quickly to the twenty-second floor.

  Elizabeth was thinking about Anthony. He was an investment banker. All gaunt cheeks, awkwardness and sparkling eyes. Gorgeous. And he made love like a man who wanted you to remember it.

  She walked up the thickly carpeted corridor to the door of her apartment and took out her keys. They were on a little Tiffany lock charm shaped as the letter E.

  She looked at the lock. It was covered in small scratch marks. She put in her key but the door was not locked. The killer heard the key in the lock. She opened the door and was surprised by the sudden scent of flowers. She raised her eyebrows, tossed her handbag aside.

  Anthony had got in somehow. Maybe he was planning something special. ‘Is that you?’ she called.

  She walked towards the bedroom. The phone started ringing and she hesitated, but then she saw it. The bed had been turned down and a small box lay on the pillow. It looked like the kind of box you’d put a ring in. A dress was all laid out. Was this Anthony’s big secret? Was he going to propose?

  From inside the wardrobe, the killer watched her. Beauty and wealth were so strange, so very strange. You could see them, but you couldn’t ever grasp them in your hand. They were in her, somewhere. He was going to find out where.

  She opened the lid of the black velvet box, and her smile drained away. An eye stared back at her. He had decided to use one of Mary-Jane’s eyeballs. Elizabeth suddenly felt terribly vulnerable, a feeling she’d not experienced before. Her legs began to shake. She couldn’t move as the door of the wardrobe opened. She couldn’t move at all. He appeared and stood before her. Over six feet and holding something that shimmered and caught the light. She held up her hand, open-palmed in a gesture of conciliation, as if that tiny little protest would be enough to stop the American Devil.

  He walked up to her and put his other hand out to touch her golden hair.

  ‘Remember me?’ he said.

  Elizabeth recoiled from his touch, her body frozen in shock, her eyes staring at the blade he held by her cheek.

  ‘You’re just perfect,’ said the killer. ‘I watched you for a long, long time, Elizabeth. I need you to cooperate with me. We haven’t got much time.’

  Oliver Stark

  American Devil

  Chapter Thirty

  The Laker Building

  November 20, 11.16 p.m.

  The crossroads outside the Laker Building were burning with flashing light, but there wasn’t a siren going. The dispatcher had called all patrol cars to go silent to the glitzy building overlooking Central Park. There were seventeen cars parked at angles within ten minutes of the call. Several squad cars, Dodges and Chevrolets were kerb-parked forming a semicircle around the entrance to the building. The Emergency Service Unit Hummers were just beyond. Uniforms were keeping the civilians away. This was the one. The big endgame.

  As Harper and Kasper pulled up, the enormous SWAT trucks arrived. They’d got a team together in advance, just in case, and the squad was jumping out of the back of each truck in their black armour and helmets. They were about as well armed as a man could be.

  Williamson was directing the operation from a TARU truck. The concierge was in the truck with him already and they had a list of the registered owners of the apartments within minutes. Williamson ran his finger down the list. ‘Here we go,’ he spat excitedly. ‘There’s only one Elizabeth in the building, thank God. We’ve found her.’ He took the map of the layout of each floor and circled the apartment, then called it through to the rest of the team over the shortwave.

  The captain of the SWAT team moved close to the map and then looked up at the building. ‘We got to hit this quick,’ he said. ‘No telling what he’s done already.’

  ‘Then get going!’ shouted Williamson.

  Outside, the patrol started cutting off the scene, several officers skirting the edge of the building from both sides, making sure no one left and no one got in. Harper looked round at the flashing lights and then up at the windows. He turned to Eddie. ‘Well, if he didn’t know we were coming he does now.’

  ‘What do you think? You don’t look convinced,’ said Eddie.

  Harper was reading through the notes of the phone call. ‘He’s not stupid, is he?’

  ‘No, he’s smart.’

  ‘Does a smart guy let us know his location with a cell phone?’

  ‘No, he’d be mad to do that.’

  ‘Yeah, so what’s his game?’

  ‘I don’t know. You think this is just a red herring? He’s gone already?’

  Harper took off his jacket and pulled on a Kevlar vest. Kasper started getting kitted up too. ‘No. I think he’s here. But if he’s up there with her, they need to go in now.’

  Kasper looked across to the first SWAT team. They had assembled at the great marble entrance to the Laker Building. Six black-clad officers in body armour were heading in the door. Each one had a face mask, Kevlar helmet and either a Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun, a Benelli M3 shotgun or a semiautomatic rifle. They looked formidable. The SWAT teams worked as small units with a leader taking the team forward: two assaulte
rs with the heavy weapons, a scout to go on ahead and a rearguard. The team entered the building.

  Harper and Kasper ran across to Williamson at the TARU truck. ‘What you got? What’s the plan?’

  ‘We got one Elizabeth in the building,’ said Williamson, breathing heavily. ‘Elizabeth Constantine. We’re lucky this time. I’ve sent the SWAT team to storm the apartment. We’re going to get this bastard. I just hope he’s not got to the girl yet.’

  ‘What’s the layout look like?’ asked Harper.

  ‘The building’s got an elevator and two stairwells. They make their way to the apartment up the stairs, take the door off its hinges, then take him down.’

  ‘Simple as that,’ Harper said.

  ‘That’s how it’s going to be. What’s the problem?’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Harper.

  ‘What? That I’m going to take him down?’

  ‘No, Nate, I don’t like the situation. He’s too smart to give us such an easy lead.’

  ‘He’s not smart, he’s spooked — the press statement panicked him. He doesn’t know we can trace his cell phone. He thinks he’s indestructible.’

  ‘Maybe, but he didn’t sound like it. Give me a look at the residents’ list.’

  ‘Sure, look all you like, but there’s only one Elizabeth living in this building. I’m going into the lobby,’ said Williamson. ‘I need to be there when they bring the bastard out.’

  Harper leaned over the list of residents. He called the concierge to his side. ‘Hey, what’s your name?’

  ‘Marvin,’ said the concierge.

  ‘Is this list up to date?’

  ‘Sure is,’ said Marvin. ‘I only just got the latest list yesterday.’

  Harper stared down the list. He was working through the angles. The killer’s call had been triangulated and he’d given them a name, Elizabeth, but maybe the name was phoney. They couldn’t know for sure. The triangulation meant only one thing and that was that twenty minutes earlier the killer had been somewhere in the building. But that was all they knew.