American Devil th&dl-1

by Oliver Stark

  The killer was now a few yards behind Kitty, who’d crossed Park Avenue and was heading towards Lexington on East 68th Street. He stared at her back as he approached. Then, out of some deep animal awareness, she felt his eyes and turned to look.

  ‘Hello, Kitty. I’ve been watching you.’

  Tom Harper was about ten feet behind the man in the black suit. He lost him for a second in the crowd and then, seemingly from the other side of the sidewalk, saw him swoop towards the blonde. ‘How the fuck did he get so close?’ Harper started to push through the crowd. He saw the man get right up to the blonde and then he saw her turn and shudder.

  Kitty swung round and stared into the eyes of the tall figure who towered above her. She couldn’t catch her breath as she felt his hand grab her thigh and squeeze. He was smiling as he did so. Christ! What was he going to do to her?

  His hand was grabbing her crotch and pulling at her as he watched her face. Her heart beat hard in her chest and her hands gripped her shopping bags with such force that her knuckles turned white. Her scream was automatic. She felt his fingers dig into her and just freaked. When her eyes opened again, he was gone. He’d moved into the crowd. Where was he? What did he want? Kitty looked round. Then she saw him coming back from the opposite direction. The same black suit surging towards her through the crowds, his head bowed low and purposeful. She saw the Hunter College subway and moved quickly towards it.

  Harper knew something was wrong. He yelled, ‘Police! Move, move!’ He was shouldering through the crowds but he was advancing slowly. Then he heard her shriek. The high-pitched squeal rose above the low hum of the crowd. ‘Police!’ shouted Harper again, pushing the shoppers aside. ‘Get out of my way.’ He looked ahead. The blonde had disappeared from view. Maybe the killer had taken her out in the crowd. He was capable of it. Of anything.

  Harper had lost both the blonde and the man in black. It was no good. He climbed on top of a trash can and scanned around.

  He spotted the blonde heading into the subway, her bright red coat easily visible in the crowd now he had the height. About two hundred yards down the street, the rest of the surveillance operation were heading towards him, but there wasn’t time to wait. Then he caught sight of a man dressed in black at the subway entrance. He was following the blonde.

  Kitty’s heart was pounding so much she could hear it loud in her ears. Her heels clipped quickly across the crowded subway station towards the gates. She didn’t have a card or a ticket and looked around, but there was no time, the man was there again. Or was it another man in black? She was confused, but he was heading right for her. She kicked off her Mary Janes and left all nine hundred dollars’ worth of designer shoes behind her as she bundled through the barriers on someone else’s metro card and ran to the escalators.

  She took out her cell phone, but as she was dialling 911 she reached the escalator and reception died on her. She looked back. He was still there — putting his card in the gate and staring at her intently. She was terrified. He was a predator. Now she understood. She was being hunted.

  The man in the black suit didn’t hurry. There was nowhere for her to run. He made a move towards her, increasing his step. The great thing about the blonde hair was that he could spot it from a distance.

  Tom Harper appeared at the subway entrance just as the blonde and the man in black were getting off the escalator down below.

  Harper ran and vaulted the gates, then stopped and looked at the crowds. He wouldn’t make it in time. Down the side of the escalator was a wide aluminium slide. Harper jumped and slid the length of the drop, keeping himself from falling by using the shoulders of the shoppers as he passed.

  At the bottom of the escalator Harper shoved the crowds out of the way and darted down into the subway. He started to sprint towards the platforms, craning his neck to look ahead. The blonde disappeared down one of the tunnels: behind her and closing in was the killer. If Harper allowed the killer to get on a train, he might lose him for good. He followed their route and came out into another large, central tunnel. He kept his eye on the tunnels leading left and right from the main thoroughfare. Which way?

  About fifty yards ahead, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the man taking the southern line. Tom darted left and found himself on a packed platform.

  By the time he’d got halfway along the platform, a train had pulled in and opened its doors. He scanned the crowd quickly, letting them get on the train, moving up the platform in the space behind them. As the doors were about to shut, he caught sight of the man in black getting on about four carriages up. There was a flash of red inside the carriage and Tom jumped aboard just as the heavy metal doors skidded shut.

  The train pulled away into the darkness of the tunnel ahead.

  With no way through the packed carriage, Tom knew he’d never reach them in the short time he had and he’d lose them at the next station. He looked at the emergency stop handle for an instant, then pulled it.

  The train started to screech to a halt, the lights flickering on and off. The crowds began to look around, worry and annoyance more than fear crossing their faces. Slowly, Tom began to move through each cabin. The lights kept flickering as his eyes scanned ahead.

  As soon as the train jolted to a stop, Tom’s quarry panicked. He could see Kitty up ahead, but he knew the cops must’ve stopped the train. He scanned down through the carriages. He couldn’t see anything, but he had to go. He had to escape. He couldn’t bear the crowds, the claustrophobia, the police on his tail. He felt sweat pouring down his face as he pushed through the throng to get to the driver’s cab.

  Ahead of him, Kitty was rushing through the carriages as fast as she could, terrified now and shouting as she pulled herself through the crowds. She could hear the commotion her attacker was making behind her as she reached the end of the train. She saw the man coming through the last carriage, sweat pouring down his face. The driver’s door was shut and locked. Kitty smashed her flat hand hard against it and started screaming, but the door didn’t open. She rattled the handle and pleaded, but she knew the driver wouldn’t open it. It was against all regulations. He had to sit tight and wait.

  As her pursuer approached, Kitty gave up. She turned towards him with her back hard against the driver’s door, slid down the door and pulled herself into a tight little ball. She closed her eyes and bent her head as far as possible into her knees.

  The man in black had nowhere to go. He turned and looked back down the train. He could see someone moving towards him, close now. He looked down at Kitty. He had no option. He smashed a window with his heel and clambered out. He hooked himself on to the side wall of the tunnel and moved to the front of the train, dropped down, and sprinted into the darkness.

  Tom arrived and knelt by Kitty. ‘You’re okay now,’ he said softly. ‘We’ve got him trapped. He’s out in the tunnel. I’m going after him. You’re safe now.’ Kitty didn’t even open her eyes and Tom climbed out of the broken window. He was less than a minute behind his quarry: near enough to hear his footsteps as he sprinted ahead in the pitch dark. Tom started to run, fearing the live electric rail and trying to find a rhythm on the track.

  At the next station, the cops had cleared the crowds from the platform and were waiting, staring into the dark tunnel. They heard footsteps in the tunnel and a man appeared in the opening of the station, running from something or someone. Then Harper appeared behind him.

  The man tried to get up on the platform but cops spanned its length, their guns pointing down at him. Panicking, not knowing which way to turn, he turned and rushed straight at Harper.

  Harper sidestepped him, caught him by the neck and threw him to the ground. A knife clattered across the rails and the man scrambled away from Harper, his heels digging into the dirt.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Tom.

  The man looked up. ‘I don’t know who I am!’ he shouted. Harper saw the manic look in his eyes and watched as his right arm reached out towards the live rail. If he touched the line, ove
r six hundred volts would course through his body, killing him instantly. Harper grabbed hold of his ankle and tried to pull him back, but it was too dangerous: if the man touched the rail while Harper was holding him they would both die. He looked up. Three officers were staring down their sights at them. Harper didn’t want this killer dead, either punched full of holes or fried on a train line. With one last effort, he threw himself on top of him, caught his right arm and rolled him towards the platform. The two bodies rolled twice and then the killer went limp. There was no fight left in him. Harper turned him in the dirt and stared at his face. The fucking guy was weeping. Harper wanted to break his jaw. He jammed his forearm under his chin and pulled his head up. He had the American Devil in his control on the ground. It felt good. Real good.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he shouted. ‘Who the fuck are you, you sick bastard?’

  The man was crying even harder now. ‘I’m nobody. Nobody at all. I was just following her. I wasn’t going to touch her or hurt her.’

  ‘I want your name,’ Harper screamed. ‘Your name!’

  The man looked up. ‘Carlisle,’ he said. ‘Winston Carlisle.’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  East Harlem

  November 23, 6.22 p.m.

  A few hours after the man in black had been rolled away from certain death, a cavalcade of red and blues screeched across the car park of the desolate halfway house up in East Harlem. The guy wouldn’t tell them where he lived, but they’d run his name through the system and in less than an hour his file came up on a screen at the NYPD database. Winston Carlisle had a record and he’d just been released into an adult housing block. The address was called through directly to Harper. He gave the order and Blue Team set off.

  Winston Carlisle had been a patient at Kirby Psychiatric and Manhattan Psychiatric Center. He lived in a halfway house in East Harlem. Things were fitting together. The killings started about a month after he was moved to a non-secured room in MPC. He was free to come and go, and that’s when the killing began: a few weeks after his release from a secure ward.

  The quiet parking lot up in the Heights was ripped up by the arrival of Blue Team and the rest of the task force. The halfway house was a low-roofed municipal building. The green barred door was wedged open and a nervous-looking woman sat in reception, eyes wide at the chaos of lights and activity. She’d only been in the job a week — the previous receptionist had died in a traffic accident — and was not yet used to dealing with cops.

  Harper led the team through the door. The killer probably went under any number of aliases as he stalked and dated these women. He probably wore disguises. He was probably a lot smarter than he made out.

  ‘We’re looking for Winston Carlisle’s room,’ said Harper. The receptionist’s arm pointed towards the stairs. ‘Room fifty-two, gentlemen.’

  The team made their way up to the second floor and down the corridor to the small room where Winston Carlisle lived. Eddie Kasper was at Tom Harper’s side. They’d spent the last few weeks hunting this man, terrified by his capabilities, and now they were looking at a urine-soaked bed in a six-by-nine room at the end of nowhere street. Winston Carlisle had been right. He was a nobody. A nobody who wanted to be somebody.

  The two men looked at the small single bedroom and couldn’t believe that it had all started in that tiny, pathetic space.

  ‘So this is the home of the American Devil,’ said Kasper.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Harper. He opened the brown file and read out the report from the hospital. ‘He was a patient at Kirby Psychiatric. He’s got a long record of treatment for paranoia. Get this. Numerous counts of attempted rape against young women going back a long way.’

  ‘Sad little bastard,’ said Eddie.

  ‘It’s not what I expected,’ said Harper. ‘It’s nothing like Dr Levene’s profile. She had him down as a successful guy living with someone. This is a no-self-esteem loner with a history of mental illness. Shit. He must have gone haywire. Probably stopped his medication or something. He was released from the Kirby a month before the first murder. Jesus, we should’ve checked this.’

  ‘That’s too cruel, man. Someone should’ve been monitoring this guy,’ said Kasper.

  Harper pulled back an orange curtain that formed a makeshift wardrobe. The two detectives looked at the hoard. A tin bucket with four bloody knives. Clothes covered in blood. Enough evidence to condemn the man. It was all so casual, so pointless. So fucking avoidable.

  ‘He wasn’t the clinical, terrifying mastermind I’d suspected. He was a lowlife,’ said Harper. ‘How did we miss this one? Somehow, this man went under the radar. Who was checking out recently released prisoners and patients? They should’ve interviewed this man in the first few days of the investigation. What was Williamson playing at?’

  Catching a killer never felt great, but it usually felt good. But this felt really bad. It just seemed so empty. Harper stood at the threshold of the room staring at the bookshelf.

  ‘What you thinking?’

  He looked across at the graphic novels and airport trash and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, no poetry, no art, nothing.’

  ‘Well, at least the women of the Upper East Side can sleep easy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harper. ‘Did anyone make contact with Kitty Hunyardi as yet?’

  ‘Yeah, we got her off the subway train. She’s being debriefed by Victim Support. She’s fine, just shaken. It’s good we can tell her we’ve got the killer behind bars. She’ll be going home soon.’

  ‘Good work, Eddie.’

  ‘Press are all over the precinct, Tom. You need to avoid the front entrance.’

  ‘What did Lafayette tell them?’

  ‘We’ve arrested a suspect, nothing more, but they’re hungry as wolves out there so they’re running with any comment they can get from us.’

  ‘As long as that’s all they’ve got, that’s fine until we charge him.’

  Harper and Kasper walked out of Winston Carlisle’s room. The forensics team were there ready to collect the evidence that would condemn him.

  They were all exhausted by the events of the day as they headed back to the precinct. Most of the detectives would go home, but not Harper. He wanted to interrogate this killer until he understood what the hell had happened over the past few weeks.

  It was the end of November and the team were all ready for a break. Catching the devil felt hollow now, but in a day or two the feeling of relief would come, the blondes would emerge from the shadows and New York would start to glimmer again. Glimmer and forget the horror.

  On his return to the precinct, Harper got straight down to the darkened observation room. Denise Levene had been called in and she stood there with Lafayette and a couple of Blue Team, all crowding round the window watching the interview room and Winston Carlisle through the mirror. Two detectives were still going at him. Soon, it would be Harper and Kasper’s turn again.

  ‘Hard to believe when you get them in captivity, isn’t it?’ said Captain Lafayette. ‘He’s admitting he followed the girl, but he says he didn’t hurt anyone. He’s smart.’

  Harper’s eyes found Denise. ‘What do you think, Doctor?’

  ‘My profile said seven things about this killer. This guy only ticks two boxes, so you know what I think. He doesn’t fit the profile. You sure it’s him?’

  ‘I’ve just been to his room in the halfway house. We found bloody knives in his room, the girls’ bloody clothes. Looks like it was him, Denise.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t fit the usual pattern. Either I’m way off or this guy is not who he appears to be.’

  ‘He’s got a history of sexual assault but no murders. This seemed to come out of all those years inside Kirby.’

  ‘Minor sexual assault and long periods of incarceration doesn’t make a killer, does it?’

  ‘It could’ve been in his head a long time. You just don’t know what’s inside these g
uys.’

  ‘I do,’ said Denise. ‘I’ve spent ten years finding out.’ She walked closer to the glass and stared into the frightened face of Winston Carlisle. It wasn’t nice to be wrong, and ten years of interviewing killers was telling her she wasn’t.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Downtown Restaurant

  November 23, 8.28 p.m.

  Across town, Erin Nash of the New York Daily Echo was sitting in a plush restaurant dining with a deputy editor from a rival paper. Short-haired, slim and wiry, Erin was pure-bred New York stock. Her father was still a barber in Brooklyn. Her favourite colour was gunmetal grey; her favourite drink was a shot and one day she would be an editor. For now, she was intent on just getting up the first few rungs of the ladder. The editor sitting opposite thought she looked cute, like an angry little elf with big brown eyes. The Daily Post had been impressed with her crime coverage. The Echo ’s circulation was up 32 per cent on the basis of her exclusives and this impressed the editor even more.

  Jed Brown was leathery-skinned but his hands were soft from daily moisturizer. He looked across at Erin’s fierce concentration. ‘What do you make of the arrest? You got any inside information?’

  ‘No, just what everyone’s got. Some guy was pulled out of the subway and they’re interrogating.’

  ‘Could be it’s him.’

  ‘Could be. We’ll have to wait and see.’

  ‘If it is, that means your little goldmine comes to an end.’

  ‘There’s a book in this, if I can get access to the killer.’

  ‘How will you do that?’

  ‘Give up my source to the NYPD in exchange for access. If they’ve got the killer, I don’t need my source any more.’

  ‘You’re quite a determined player,’ Jed said, and smiled. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A cop on the homicide team with a liking for reporters.’