Death by Pride: A Kyle Callahan Mystery

by Mark McNease

  “Is Vinnie sick?” Kyle asked, scanning the paper. The city’s new mayor was making changes, many of which were controversial and demanded above-the-fold coverage.

  “No, it’s some family thing,” Danny said. “Something about his brother missing, I’m not sure. There’s not that much communication between tenants and the doormen, but I’ve heard things in the elevator.”

  Kyle kept reading the paper. The mayor was pushing for some new legislation, the mayor was insisting on a vote his way by the City Council, the U.S. Congress was at a stalemate again. He flipped the paper over to see what news hadn’t made it to the top … and he froze. An article just below the fold was headlined, “Man Found in East River Identified, Police Searching for Clues.”

  Kyle started reading the story.

  “You know, I think Smelly’s finally losing weight,” Danny said, looking down at the cat. She had been pre-diabetic for several years, but every effort at trimming her down had failed. “Maybe it’s age.”

  “Shh!” Kyle said, focused on the article

  “What’s so interesting that you have to ‘shhh’ me?”

  Kyle ignored him, reading. “What is Vinnie’s last name?” he said after a moment.

  “Campagna. Vincent Campagna.”

  “He has a brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “A brother who’s also a doorman.”

  “Yes. I think their father was, too. A family tradition I guess, like the military. What are you reading? Is Vinnie in the news?”

  “No, he’s not,” Kyle said, sliding the paper to the side. “But his brother, Victor, is.”

  “In a good way, I hope,” Danny said, reaching for the paper to read about it himself.

  “Not at all. In a bad way. A very bad way.”

  Danny read the article quickly. “Oh my God,” he said.

  “Oh my God is right. Victor Campagna is the body they found in the river Tuesday morning. You saw the story.”

  “It was everywhere. But nothing about it being an accident or a murder.”

  “This is awful.”

  Smelly began meowing, an escalation of her demands for a treat. Kyle swatted her away with his free hand.

  “He’s back,” Kyle said.

  Danny looked up at him. The article hadn’t named a suspect. “Who is ‘he’?”

  “The Pride Killer.”

  Danny remembered then. Every year for four years at Pride weekend the East River had become a depository for victims of a man—assuming it was a man—who remained uncaught. The media had dubbed him the Pride Killer, because the murders only happened that weekend in June, stopping once the festivities were over. Then radio silence. No killing, no bodies, nothing for another year, and another.

  “Three years,” Kyle said, as if he’d read Danny’s thoughts. “He stopped three years ago and they couldn’t figure out why. Everyone hoped he was dead, or that he’d come to his senses, if madmen have senses.”

  “But the paper doesn’t say who—”

  “It’s him. The hands and feet bound, the strangulation, the location of the body. Even if it traveled in the current they’ll trace it back to the general vicinity of where this guy dumps his bodies.”

  “Now we know why Vinnie hasn’t been to work,” Danny said. “He must be devastated.”

  “It says the body was found two nights ago. Poor Vinnie. And his family, I can’t imagine.”

  The men grew silent. Smelly, sensing something was wrong, stopped her meowing and slinked off into the living room. She would get what she wanted, but later, when moods had returned to normal. Leonard was still staring at the coffee pot.

  Finally, Kyle said, “He won’t stop.”

  “How do you know that, if it’s even him? He stopped for three years.”

  “Because this was the first. There will be a second, and a third. That’s the way he works.”

  Danny had a sinking feeling. If timing was everything, it worked against them very well. Detective Linda visiting, a body in the East River; the stars had aligned in a way most displeasing to him as he watched Kyle’s face for the telltale glazed expression, the speeding, clicking thoughts. He worried Kyle would not stay out of it, and that sooner or later something terrible would happen to them. They were married now, together forever. What happened to one of them, happened to both of them.

  “Listen, Kyle …”

  “Don’t worry. This is one for the police.”

  Danny had the feeling he had just been lied to. Not deliberately; Kyle had every intention of staying out of it. But it was his nature to wonder—wonder who this man was taking the lives of other men, where he lived, how he found his victims. Danny knew that as much as Kyle might try to ignore this, it would take root in his mind and grow until he had to do something.

  “What’s cooking?” Detective Linda said, startling them both. Neither had heard her come out of the bedroom.

  A sense of dread came over Danny as he blew across his coffee, cooling it. He knew Linda and Kyle would soon be lost in conversation about serial killers and floating bodies. Why can’t his husband just be an amateur photographer and a personal assistant? Why must he take it upon himself to rid the world of bad people? Sooner or later one of those bad people might rid the world of Kyle.

  CHAPTER Three

  She could hear the men in the living room ... or was it the kitchen? Living room, kitchen, entryway, they all seemed to flow into each other in Manhattan apartments, if Kyle and Danny's was a typical example. Linda Sikorsky had no way of knowing—she had not been in any other apartments in New York City, except for the penthouse she and Kyle had burst into just in time to stop Kieran Stipling from cutting Stuart Pride's throat. That was over a year ago, and still the memory of it gave her chills. She stretched on the sofa bed, letting the unpleasant thoughts evaporate as she reached up with her hands, stretched her arms, and pushed her toes down until they almost went over the end of the mattress.

  So much had happened since those awful murders. Kyle and Danny had gotten married, an elaborate event to which Linda and Kirsten were witness along with dozens of other people. The women had stayed in a boutique hotel in Park Slope that catered to lesbians, and only overnight; they wanted the men to have time alone, as if seven years were not enough. And even though Kyle had protested, insisting they should stay a few days, Linda knew he was secretly happy to have them all gone. Weddings were intense affairs and while it had been glorious, Linda was glad she and Kirsten had taken a much more intimate approach. They’d had to; Kirsten’s mother was living on borrowed time (or, Linda thought, dying on it), and circumstances demanded they move quickly.

  Linda's personal life had experienced significant changes as well. She and Kirsten McClellan were living together now as wife and wife, tucked in the woods in Linda’s small house. There’d been a rocky, unsure time, last fall when Kyle and Danny visited, but it had passed and things were as secure and comforting as Linda imagined they could be, back when she’d first said hello at a New Year’s Eve party to the woman she now shared her life with. Back then Kirsten was a highly successful real estate agent in New Hope, long established with her own company, and infinitely more experienced with relationships than Linda. While Linda had had several relationships with men over her forty-four years and even once considered marrying in her twenties, she had never dated a woman. Now she was married to one.

  Another big change since her last trip to Manhattan was retiring from the police force and opening her vintage-everything store. For Pete’s Sake was named after her father, a cop whose senseless death when Linda was eight years old had left an indelible stain on her heart. It was why she’d become a police officer, and why she named her business after him. She had put in her twenty years on the force, the last five as a homicide detective, and had given her notice. On the last Friday in September, Detective Linda became just Linda Sikorsky. No more notifying the next of kin, no more days at the precinct, no more nights and weekends hoping her phone wouldn't rin
g, calling her to a crime scene. She loved being a cop, and making detective had been among her life's true high points. But she had gone into the career in large part because of her father and the time had come to move on and honor him in other ways.

  She had known even as a child that her mother Estelle worried every moment Pete was on duty, and most that he was not. Pete Sikorsky was the kind of cop—the kind of man—who stepped in if he saw someone in trouble or if he thought he could stop evil in its many forms. It's what killed him, and why Estelle had been right to fret nearly every waking moment of their lives. Pete had gone to the small corner grocery store just three blocks from their house and, proving fate's capricious nature, walked into a robbery. He hadn't entered the store yet when two men who had just held up the grocer at gun point came bursting out of the door. A police cruiser that had been nearby came gunning up the street. One of the robbers fired, confusion ensued, and five seconds later Peter Sikorsky lay dying on the sidewalk, a stray bullet in his neck.

  Several years later Estelle remarried and moved with her new husband and daughter to Philadelphia, where she now lived as a seventy-three-year-old double widow. Linda became a police officer, got a job with the New Hope force, and twenty-plus years later she had turned one of the biggest pages in her life. Her one advantage was knowing what she wanted to do “in retirement.” Many people have no idea what to do with themselves when they leave a job they'd been at for over two decades; many a cop ended his life with a gun in his mouth, haunted by what he'd seen, usually divorced a time or two, and so lost he or she saw no way out of the tunnel but the bright light of a gun muzzle. Linda would not be one of them. She had long wanted to open a “vintage everything” store, modeled after her favorite shop in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She'd even become friends with Suzanne, the store owner, and Suzanne had mentored her since the store’s opening last November. The business had done well and Linda had even been able to hire an assistant manager, Mitchell Parsons. Mitch was in his fifties, a devoted gay bachelor and an even more devoted assistant manager who ran the store more efficiently than Linda ever could. He’d been a real find and she was relieved beyond words to have him back in New Hope taking care of the store now. With her mother-in-law dying in Phoenix and the frequent trips she and Kirsten were making there, having Mitch to take care of things was among the great comforts in Linda’s life. She made a mental note to call him later this morning and see how things were going—if he didn’t call her first to tell her, which was usually the case.

  Kyle and Danny were sitting at the kitchen table when Linda joined them, wearing yellow silk pajamas with bright green parrots on them. She had picked them up on a trip to San Francisco with Kirsten for their honeymoon. They accentuated her long dark blonde hair. Linda Sikorsky was a tall woman, “big boned” as her mother always said. At five-nine she stood head to head with Kyle. When she’d been on duty, wearing her navy suit, a holster on her hip and a badge clipped to her breast pocket, she had presented an intimidating presence. Sometimes it worked in her favor, such as when she had to question suspects; other times it kept people from trusting and befriending her. She believed it was one of the reasons she had stayed single and closeted for so many years; not because she didn’t accept herself, but because life was just easier, simpler, when you spent it alone. It was a feeling she hoped to never have again.

  “What’s cooking?” Linda said, shuffling into the kitchen.

  “Nothing,” Kyle replied. “We’re going out for breakfast.”

  “No, not literally cooking. I wouldn’t expect you to make me breakfast. I mean what’s up. It’s seven o’clock in the morning.”

  “We’re up, obviously,” Danny said, standing and heading to the sink. He took a coffee cup from the cabinet above it and handed it to Linda. “Kyle was just going through the mail, reading the paper.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “In the mail or the paper?”

  “Either.”

  “Oh yes,” Kyle said, and he tapped the newspaper with his finger. “Something very interesting indeed.”

  Linda got her coffee and joined Kyle at the table.

  “Why are you so interested in this?” Danny asked. He did not sit back down. He planned to go back to the bedroom and watch the news, joined by Smelly and Leonard, each cat settling in on either side of him.

  “Because it’s Vinnie’s brother.”

  Linda: “Who’s Vinnie? What are you interested in?”

  Having their doorman’s brother found floating in the East River made it personal for Kyle.

  “I didn’t know you were friends with Vinnie,” Danny said.

  “I’m not unfriendly. We talk. And think about it, Danny. If this could happen to Vinnie’s brother, it could happen to anyone … and will. If this is the first victim, which I’m guessing it is, there are going to be two more. Two innocent men, right now going about their lives with no idea what’s waiting for them.”

  “And what is that?” asked Linda.

  “Not what,” Kyle said, “but who.”

  Kyle began telling Linda about the unsolved murders linked to the Pride Killer, how he had struck every Pride weekend for four years, then vanished, and how now, with the death of their doorman’s brother, he had managed to hit very close to home.

  Danny left them to their conversation and headed to the bedroom, the cats following behind like large mice on a trail of cheese. He wanted nothing to do with serial killers and dead bodies in the river. He had hoped after the Pride Gallery murders and that terrible business at CrossCreek Farm their lives would stop intersecting with murder, but he knew his hope had been in vain. Trouble had a way of finding them, as if it had been patiently waiting just ahead for them to turn the corner. Then it stepped out from the shadows.

  CHAPTER Four

  D sat luxuriating in the vastness of his king-sized bed, enjoying the quiet of the morning. The bedroom was in the corner of the townhouse’s second floor and he could see the sun rising slowly over the river six blocks away. He had loved rivers all his life and would live on a riverbank if he could. If the rains came and flooded his riverbank home, he would stand in his living room with his legs in the water, marveling at the water’s mystery and power, and if it swept him away he would glide along in its current, surrendered to going wherever it took him. He had no idea where this love came from—there had been no river in Anaheim when he was a child, no river near his uncle Leo’s apartment in Brooklyn, where he’d gone to live when his mother fled back to Berlin in tatters. And it wasn’t a general love of water; he was not fond of oceans or lakes. It was specific to rivers, something about rivers that moved his spirit in ways matched only by killing. He kept meaning to examine the connection between the two—a river’s mighty flow as it followed its banks along channels carved in antiquity, and the mighty flow of his blood when he ended men’s lives and commended their lifeless bodies to the very river he loved and respected so much. But he had no one with whom to examine this connection, no therapist to talk to, no close friend. So he had put it off and put it off, until he finally accepted he may never analyze or understand it. It just was.

  He was careful not to drop crumbs on the sheets as he enjoyed his toasted corn muffin, his laptop open at his side. He had no housekeeper; inviting anyone at all into his home was a risk. He occasionally needed a plumber or an electrician, but he made sure they stayed in whichever part of the house he needed them. And they never, ever, went into the basement. Only invited guests went there, sometimes to see his artificial wine cellar, other times to see his one-of-a-kind gaming room with whatever latest computer equipment he’d read about. Victor Someone was into miniature train sets, of all the ridiculous things, and to his delight he discovered that D was, too! In fact, D had what some considered the most elaborate miniature train setup east of the Mississippi and wouldn’t Victor like to see that? Why yes, yes he would. It’s right down here, in the basement, please come, I’ll show you. D had shown him, and like all the guest
s invited into D’s basement, Victor Someone had not come back alive.

  He was bored with Victor already. He’d stared at the idiot’s driver’s license for part of the morning, trying to relive the excitement of the kill, but there had been so little then or now. It was like trying to remember the marvelous taste of an especially bland meal. He gave up after his first cup of tea and half his muffin, tossed the driver’s license aside and focused on the two dozen responses he’d gotten from his ad on ManMate. He’d worded it carefully to hint at his wealth and age without coming right out and presenting himself as a sugar daddy. He preferred ones with some intelligence, not run-of-the-mill hustlers. The more success they had in the world, the more they were able to hold an interesting conversation, the more he enjoyed their company for a short while before inviting them to see whatever he’d determined they wanted to see in his basement. He extracted just enough information from them to fantasize something down there they would want to see, and it always worked. But the dumb ones, the hustlers and the rent boys? They were only there for one thing, quick and easy. D was not interested in killing men no one would miss. He wanted worthy prey, so he placed his ads to attract it:

  Single older man seeks friendship and possible traveling companion. Enjoy fine dining, theater, quality wine and quality time. Not looking for hookups or one-night stands. You should be intelligent, engaging, fully self-supporting and interested in seeing the city and possibly the world with your new best friend. Must be over 30 and easy on the eyes. Photo with all replies please.

  It was broad yet specific enough to get at least some responses from the types of men he was looking for. Victor had been an anomaly, a customer he’d never seen before but whose amazing blue eyes and easy smile had tripped him up, caught him off guard. He did not make mistakes, and would not make one again. He’d paid for it in a lackluster kill that left him unsatisfied. He planned to make up for it with the next one.