by Oliver Stark
‘I’m healed. You work quick. Take it as a compliment.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t compliment me, just listen to me. I think I’ve got seven incontrovertible facts about the killer. You want to hear them?’
‘Sure, go ahead.’
‘He’s white, mid-thirties, married, high school educated, self-controlled, and works in a sales or marketing job with some background in police or military work.’
Harper listened to the brief summary and then nodded. ‘I hope you’re right. I’ll share it with the team.’
‘You don’t want to ask questions?’
‘I figured this guy had a stable background, or at least something that appears stable on the surface. If not, he would’ve been found out years ago.’ He turned to her. ‘How are you feeling about this?’
‘More curious than scared, I think,’ said Levene.
‘Well, just hang back. A corpse can hang on your retina for a long time. Some stay for years.’
‘Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks for the warning.’
They arrived at the near-deserted street in East Harlem and got out of the car, seeing the first officer slowly tying off a parking lot and talking into his shortwave. It was a quiet crime scene, with no traffic around — just a dirty street of unused warehouses and old abandoned shops. They could hear the pervasive roar of traffic and the echoing shouts of distant arguments, but here it was still and silent. There were a couple of detectives on the scene and a single crime scene officer.
‘What’s the story?’ asked Harper as he approached the detectives.
‘Nothing, yet. Precinct got a call about a body in a municipal dumpster, so we showed up.’
‘Who called?’
‘No name. Just gave us the location. Patrol came by about two hours ago, had a look and called us in. Might be a gangbanger, a shooting or some crack whore sleeping off her debts for the rest of eternity. Who knows?’
Tom took a look around. This was a real quiet one. Someone getting rid of a body quickly. No showmanship, wealth or extravagance like they’d been dealing with on the Upper East Side. This body was hidden. It wasn’t the American Devil’s style at all.
Denise leaned forward. ‘What’s your feeling, Tom?’
Tom shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. ‘It’s nothing like the others. The killer always left the naked body visible. He likes to show, to shock. This is off his track, too. I don’t know. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with him. Just another sad life coming to an end.’
He didn’t want to go over to the dumpster and look at the body. He breathed deeply as he took a step forward towards the crime scene detective in her whites.
‘Detective Harper, Homicide. What have you got?’
She didn’t look up. There was an expression of fierce concentration on her face.
‘Can’t see much. Strangled by the look of it. Raped, probably — at least, her pants and jeans are round her ankles. It’s difficult to tell.’
It wasn’t the answer Harper wanted. The American Devil raped and strangled his victims. Tom just wanted to be sure he could strike this one from his list. ‘Can I take a look?’
‘You want bad dreams? Go ahead.’
Tom walked over to the side of the big steel dumpster and looked in. The woman in white handed him a torch.
The beam of light caught the flat, smooth skin of the girl’s stomach. Tom passed the light over the rest of her body. A poor young life thrown out with the trash. He didn’t want Denise to see it. How can you look at the destruction that human hands can wreak and show it to someone else? That’s why cops got cynical. You had to keep it to yourself. Crime scenes were usually peopled by those who had been desensitized, and together they created a community of objective observers that protected everyone at the scene. Seeing Denise at the edge of the lot made him realize it was a good thing to keep outsiders away. They bring emotions and emotions create cracks in your own defences.
It brutalizes you, no doubt about it. You see things that take you down notch by notch until all you see around you is the human animal — an aggressive and dangerous beast.
Harper went over to Denise and took her to one side. He told her not to look.
‘What did you see? At least tell me.’ Her hand gripped his arm.
‘Caucasian female. Late teens. Bruising on the neck. Half undressed. Not a lot else.’
‘A sad end,’ said Denise. Then her mind started working. ‘Why did you think it might be him?’
Harper walked with her to the edge of the car park. He looked up at the grey fall sky splintered with dark slashes of storm clouds and wished he had faith in something. ‘I just can’t put my finger on it. But I don’t like the similarities.’
‘It’s not his signature, is it?’
‘No. It doesn’t look like it. It’s not his ritual. We’ll wait for the DNA analysis, see what this looks like. But he might change his style. He took out Williamson with arrows. He’s capable of anything.’
‘What’s your gut say?’
‘It’s telling me that I’m hungry.’
‘Mine too.’
Harper moved Denise across the parking lot as a CSU van pulled up. His eyes scanned the graffiti tags all over the dumpster as he passed by. ‘There’s no posing, no poem,’ he said, ‘but I want to look around a little more.’
Harper put Denise in a patrol car and sent her back to her car on Madison, while he watched the team arrive at the scene. Was it his elusive serial killer? He couldn’t tell. If it was, he’d suddenly taken a different approach. That didn’t help. Patterns caught killers.
Harper spent an hour walking around the scene trying to figure out what had happened. They should be able to ID her pretty quickly on the street if she was a hooker.
The car park was covered in a thin layer of sand and dust. He looked all over it, but there weren’t any car tracks at all. It was strange. How do you hump a dead body around one of the most populated cities in the world without getting seen? Then he saw something that could easily have been overlooked. Leading up to the dumpster were two small tracks about ten inches apart. Harper knelt by the tracks. A small trolley of some kind? He called the CSU detective across and asked her to get the tracks mapped and photographed.
As Harper was walking back to his car, he spotted something else so small that it might easily have been missed. Something on the ground in the dirt, caught in the wet along with the trash. Harper crossed and knelt by the kerb. He pulled on a latex glove and then reached down into the gutter and picked the thing up carefully between his thumb and forefinger. He put it to his eye and turned it. He knew what it was. It was a single pale pink petal. Harper felt the hairs on his neck prickle. Cherry blossom.
He scrambled to his feet and called Captain Lafayette. He was about to give him the whole scenario, but Lafayette broke in real fast. ‘Save it and get your ass back here. I’m watching the Madison Avenue feeds and I think we got ourselves a situation developing. We’ve got a high-heeled blonde and some guy in a black suit is following her.’
Chapter Forty-Five
Madison Avenue
November 23, 2.33 p.m.
On the Upper East Side, Kitty Hunyardi entered Lush amp; Low on East 67th Street. It was her weekly appointment. A salesman was blocking the entrance as he tried to get to speak to the manager. Kitty tutted loudly until he moved his large case out of the way. She moved across and sat in her favourite leather chair without speaking to anyone, placed her Gucci lizard clutch bag on her lap and clicked her bright blue snakeskin Mary Janes on the chrome foot rail. She had only to wait a few seconds before Antonio appeared behind her, his hands on her head, letting her long blond hair fall through his fingers.
The salesman turned and stared at her. It was hard not to. Kitty was the beautiful twenty-three-year-old daughter of some dead line of Hungarian aristocracy. Her family had lost its title in the forties, but they had emigrated and invested in rubber. And rubber had come good.
Across the street,
a man in a black suit with grey hair stared in at the salon. Kitty didn’t notice him at first. He was just part of the background, part of the noise that she needn’t bother herself about. But there was something about him that caused her to turn and look.
As she did so he turned and walked away. Kitty had noticed some guy a couple of times now. She thought she was being followed. The night before, someone had been overly interested in her in a cocktail bar. She was sure that the same guy followed her outside and tried to get his hand in her bag as she waited for a cab in the road, but a couple of cops had been close and the guy just walked by. A week earlier, someone had been waiting around near her apartment. The first time, she’d just let it go, but now it was three times and Kitty was superstitious. She didn’t like threes. Especially not if it meant someone was stalking her.
Kitty’s instinctive reaction was that it was her father’s protectiveness again. The man in the suit was probably hired to look out for her, make sure she walked in safety at all times.
But he wasn’t quite like the bodyguards she’d known before and bodyguards didn’t swoop in so close you could smell their cologne. What was it about him? When a guy won’t let go of you with his eyes? That was it. He stared at her. She could feel it. Drilling into her. Anger? Hatred? Something that just felt wrong.
Kitty left the salon forty minutes later with her hair trimmed and blow-dried. She looked up and down the street but the black-suited man was nowhere to be seen. She looked at her diamond-encrusted watch, checked her lips in the window of the salon and walked across the street to Madison Avenue. She was due at her mother’s in an hour, enough time to see if anything caught her eye.
Kitty walked up Madison, her eyes fixed ahead, her long legs moving with practised precision and her mind far away in some fantasy land of her own making. She always imagined that the paparazzi were trailing her and she acted with the exaggerated gestures and look of disdain she’d seen in so many magazines. Only Kitty Hunyardi wasn’t famous. Not yet, anyhow. She’d talked to her PR firm that morning and they’d found a producer willing to give her a meeting. It was the first step. That’s all you ever needed. Just one step.
A distance behind her, the grey-haired man in the black suit appeared from a doorway and started to follow her. Kitty turned into the Versace store. The man in black walked straight past the boutique and stopped on the corner of East 69th Street. He waited for about ten minutes. This was how it was supposed to be. He pulled out his schedule. Following the plan was important. Keeping exactly to the plan. He knew exactly how long Kitty would spend in each shop and he waited accordingly. When people kept such rigid routines, it was easy to track them.
Across the street from Versace, the mobile CCTV unit filmed the store entrance. Kitty was an obvious target for the American Devil. In the van, Kasper was watching her closely.
‘Zoom,’ he called into the microphone. The camera caught Kitty swaggering into the store. She was stunning to look at. Film star looks and attitude too. Plastic bottle beauty. Kasper raised his eyebrows in appreciation and ordered one of his undercover agents into the store.
The report came back quickly. Subject was in visual contact. No suspects. Kasper sighed and kept scanning all seven screens. Kitty appeared again on the screen. She was carrying a Versace bag and turned right. She walked about a block and then entered the Prada store. Kasper watched her, camera to camera.
Inside the Prada store, Kitty flicked through the rails, half interested, and picked out a zip-fronted silver dress. The man in black was already in the store, as the plan dictated, and he was on her in an instant.
‘Can I help, madam?’
Kitty didn’t even look up. The staff always crowded her. ‘No, go away,’ she said absently.
The man picked out another silver dress and held it up. ‘I should think Madam would look fantastic in this.’ Kitty looked up at the dress. ‘What do you think?’ said the man in black.
‘I think you didn’t hear me,’ said Kitty and turned away.
The undercover cop strolled into the store on Kasper’s command. ‘Nothing to report. Female shopper and male shop assistant. That’s it.’
In the van, Kasper sat back. Maybe it was going to be another day with nothing to show.
‘I think it’s gorgeous,’ said the man at her shoulder. ‘You’ve got a hint of silver in your eyes, a kind of stone colour.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I’d love to talk about them over lunch.’
Kitty reacted to his tone. She didn’t like his attitude or his smell. She suddenly realized what she could smell on him, too. It was the cologne from the night before. She turned and looked at him. It was the guy who’d been following her. If he was following her, he was taking things too far. She would get out quick, get home and tell Daddy. Daddy was real mean when he wanted to be. ‘I don’t need advice or a lunch date from the hired help,’ she said. She pushed the dress into the man’s chest and shot him a look of disdain. Then she left the store in a hurry, feeling the anxiety rise in her chest. Inside, the man in black replaced the dress with slow, careful movements. She’d had her chance. He always gave people a chance. Funny, they never took it.
Kasper watched Kitty leave Prada alone and head up East 68th Street, away from their surveillance towards Park Avenue. It was another three minutes before he caught a glimpse of the figure of the man in black leaving Prada. He sat up.
‘Where did he come from?’
The team on the street responded. ‘He’s been in there a while. He’s the shop assistant.’
‘When the blonde was in there?’
The cop confirmed it. Kasper watched the figure with the grey hair move past the final camera. He zoomed in. ‘Get me closer, Ali.’ Ali shot across to the control desk and moved the zoom. The face was partly obscured but Kasper thought it was similar to that in the photofit. This was a grey-haired man. He whispered through his radio to the team, ‘We got a visual on a possible suspect. Male, six foot plus, black suit, greying hair, walking south down Madison.’ He looked back at the screen. ‘Shit! Have we lost the blonde?’ He called across to Lol Edwards, ‘Get her ID from Prada or Versace — wherever she made a purchase. We need to know who she is.’
‘We’re on it,’ said Edwards.
The last team to follow her reported in. ‘She went straight past us. She’s out of shot on Park Avenue.’
Tom arrived in his Buick and parked half on the sidewalk on East 68th Street. He had the killer’s profile from Denise on his knee, and had been listening to the radio conversations as he drove. As he picked up the latest thread, he saw the blonde woman with the shopping bags hurry past. She was uneasy and even glanced behind her. Tom looked right down the street and saw the man in black.
Tom felt his nerves prick up and slowly opened the car door. ‘Kasper, this is Harper. I’m going to get in tight and see if I can follow him,’ he said on his radio.
Camera Three zoomed in, but the blonde and now the man in black had gone out of range. It was difficult to tell anything about the latter’s intentions. He was doing nothing but walking up the street. He walked out of shot and out of the range of the final camera just as Tom stepped on to the sidewalk and crossed the street.
Kasper thought for a moment. ‘Team Four, the blonde in Prada was talking to a male shop assistant. Can you give me a brief description?’
Detective Elaine Fittas came back over the airwaves. ‘Yeah, boss. We’ve got a guy, mid-thirties, greying hair, black suit.’
Kasper stood up. ‘Team Four, one more thing. Is he or isn’t he on the staff of Prada?’ He waited as Elaine went to check.
Her voice crackled back. ‘Negative, boss. They’ve never seen him before.’
That was all Kasper needed. He had to make a quick decision. ‘I think it’s him. Put the teams on standby, we’ve got to follow on foot. Team Four — get going. Has anyone got a visual?’
Team Four couldn’t get near the suspect. The crowds were so thick that they couldn’t progress. Harper was closest, onl
y a few yards behind, watching the man in black as he closed in on the gorgeous blonde. What was he planning? A public execution? Or was he in the stalking phase? This guy was capable of anything. Was the American Devil on a busy Manhattan street about to do serious damage? Harper started to run.
Chapter Forty-Six
Upper East Side
November 23, 3.58 p.m.
The killer could see Kitty on the street, walking in her perfect bright red coat and dress. He wanted to taste her blood so much he could feel the sweet metallic flavour already rolling around his mouth. He wondered when he became a killer. Was it the first time he held someone’s throat and watched them pass from life to death? Or was it long before that? Was it some time way back in the past?
Perhaps it was just an art, like poetry, but with human blood and human remains to be savoured. Or perhaps he became a killer at high school. He had strange thoughts sitting in those classrooms.
He knew every action had consequences. These things went deep. But did they make him kill? He didn’t know. And he so wanted to know, to solve the problem of himself. Like everyone did. He was just a regular guy trying to solve his particular set of problems. The devil had come to rescue him. Slipped into his skin. He was a devil now — a real-life, walking, talking son of Satan.
He had been reflective all morning, as he showered, as he shaved, as he pissed. He knew why, too. He’d wanted Kitty the night before. He’d been ready. He’d been really ready. And he had to go away empty-handed. Not today. Not at all. The heat was still on. Deep within him, he felt the surge of lust that he knew would swamp him and drag him down to hell.
He strode towards Kitty as she walked up the street. The air was peculiarly stark and bright. It felt incredibly vivid to him. It always did when he was out hunting. He stopped to look at the bursting colours of the sky. It was absolutely magical. He knew that the devil was here. It was only when the devil woke that the world changed so quickly and everything looked like a Technicolor extravaganza. Such a strange night, it was, when the devil killed for the first time.
