by R. G. Belsky
Chapter 60
Okay, David Galvin was dead, and now someone else was helping him play out the end of his deadly game.
I sat at my desk in the Banner city room, took out a yellow legal pad, and began writing down the names of all the potential suspects.
The first name I wrote down was Lisa Montero. Only I’d already eliminated her. Elizabeth Martin had told me she didn’t do the Franze killings. It was on Galvin’s list of victims. And I still believed all of those murders were connected. So, if Lisa was innocent of that one, it was logical to assume she was innocent of the others too. Of course, if you believed Greg Ackerman, she was a prime suspect in the deaths of her father, mother, and brother. He said she wanted control of the entire Montero business empire for herself. But that was a different story. I had trouble enough dealing with one story at a time.
Then there was Ackerman and Andy Kramer. Both of them went to NYU at the same time as Galvin. Other than that, I didn’t have a whole lot of evidence linking either of them to the murders. I’d been suspicious of Ackerman at first because of his zeal to prosecute Lisa. But, after seeing the old newspaper clipping about his father, I understood why he was bitter about the Montero family. That didn’t make him a murderer.
As for Andy, he was my boss. He was ambitious, he was two-faced, and he was the one who put me on this story in the first place. Did he have some ulterior motive for doing that? Probably not. And I wasn’t exactly going to help my career at the Banner by making wild accusations against my boss. I’d already made wild accusations about my best friend at the Banner—Bonnie. If I kept doing it, people there might begin to suspect there was something wrong with me. Or, as Dr. Whalen so aptly put it, they’d start to think I was totally fucked up.
Another late entry in the suspect sweepstakes was Jimmy Richmond. The son of the Banner’s owner and the new publisher. He’d gone to NYU in the mid ’80s too—and he asked me a lot of questions about Lisa Montero. Wow, lock him up and throw away the key, huh? I had no reason to suspect him of anything but curiosity about my love life.
I wrote down Linda Hiller and Arthur Dodson too.
They were dead, but I remembered what Christine Whalen had told me. Assume nothing. There are no rules in this game. Just for the hell of it, I checked on both of them. Just like I did before with Galvin. When I was finished, I was satisfied. The bodies that were taken to the morgue were Arthur Dodson and Linda Hiller. They were definitely dead.
That was all.
I’d run out of suspects.
Of course, the killer might be someone not on my list. Someone who’d gone to school with Galvin, but I didn’t know about yet. There were twenty thousand students there with him. That was a lot of suspects. But I had a gut feeling the answers I was looking for were right in front of me. I just couldn’t see them.
I went through all the names on the list again. They all had some connection to NYU when Galvin was there. For most of them, it was a very tenuous connection. Except for one. One person’s fingerprints were all over this case. A student at NYU. A friend of David Galvin there. And a connection to at least one of the victims on his list.
I looked at the name—and drew a big circle around it.
The key to my entire story.
Been there right from the very beginning.
Lisa Montero.
Chapter 61
The Montero estate on Shelter Island—where I found Lisa this time—was under incredible security.
There were guards at the gate, all over the grounds, and in the house. Those were only the ones that were visible. I figured that there were more hidden away out of sight. Out on the water, the cabin cruiser that John Montero and I had fished from that day patrolled the shore line. I saw men on the deck with guns.
“Someone murdered my father,” Lisa told me. “They may be responsible for the deaths of my mother and brother too. I’m not taking any chances.”
We were sitting on a deck behind the house, which had a view of Long Island Sound and the jagged coastline across the bay. Lisa was wearing a two-piece blue bikini with a short white robe over it. Her dark black hair hung down over the back of the robe, making it look even whiter than it was. She looked sexy, but I didn’t care about that anymore. I was there on business.
“I don’t think it’s just what happened to your father and family that’s got you scared,” I said. “I think it’s Arthur Dodson and Linda Hiller too. You want to make sure you don’t wind up like them.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked innocently.
But her heart wasn’t in the lie anymore.
She knew that I knew.
“You see, I keep coming back to William Franze’s death,” I said. “It just doesn’t fit the pattern of any of the rest of them on Galvin’s list. Why now? Why him? What was the connection? I could never find one. It just doesn’t make sense unless you murdered him in a jealous rage. Now that makes sense. But you didn’t kill him, I know that now. So that leaves only one possibility.”
I took a deep breath. “It was supposed to be you that died that night. You were the target. Always have been. I don’t know why I didn’t see that before. You’d been out on a date with Franze. Someone followed you back to his place and decided to kill both of you. Franze was just in the way. Only you had a fight with him and left before the shooting started. In all the confusion, the killer might not have even known that at first. But, even after the killer knew the mistake, it didn’t really matter. You were the obvious suspect for the murders. You’d go to jail for the rest of your life. Either way, the killer got you. It was a no-lose situation. Until I came along and cleared you.”
“My hero,” Lisa smiled.
“Tell me the truth about what really happened at NYU,” I said.
Lisa sat there, staring out at the boat on the water for a long time.
“How much do you already know?” she finally asked.
“I know for sure that you knew Galvin in college. The rest is mostly speculation. But logical speculation. There has to have been a connection between your relationship with him and what’s happening now.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she sighed. “We did have a relationship. But it’s not like you think.”
She said they had met early during her freshman year, just like she’d told me before. At first, she was really interested in him. He was handsome, smart, and fascinating to talk to. There was something more too, she told me. She said he had this piercing quality in his eyes. When he talked to her, she said, it was like he could see right inside of her. He was incredibly mesmerizing. He probably could have had any girl he wanted.
But he made it clear that sex wasn’t what he wanted from her.
“He said he was looking for a spiritual mate,” Lisa recalled. “Someone he could spent eternity with. Real weird stuff like that. If some guy told me that today, I’d get away from him as fast as I could. But I was young, nineteen years old. I’d had guys hitting on me all through high school, who just wanted to get into my pants. He was different. I bought his whole brooding genius act—at least for a while. I figured sooner or later we’d wind up in bed. Especially after he introduced me to his parents and everything. But we never did. He just wasn’t into sex. At least not the conventional type of sex.
“One morning he was really excited. He told me how he had spent the whole night watching some girl in the dormitory next to his through binoculars. He watched her get dressed for a date. He watched her get undressed after the date. He watched her and her boyfriend make love together. He even watched her sleep at night. He said he felt so close to her that it was like he was in the bed next to her.
“Okay, he was weird, but I still thought he was harmless. And I got a kick out of the fact that he was so different. He told me he liked to play something called the Pretend Game—and he showed me how to do it. We’d pick out a couple of people—a girl for him, a guy for me—and come up with a whole fantasy about what we’d do with them. Sometimes we’d watc
h people for hours, following them around campus all day without them having a clue we’d entered their private little world. It was fun. Kind of like our little secret. And, like I said, it still seemed really harmless.
“After a while, David’s fantasies started getting violent. He started talking about kidnapping people and torturing them and making them plead for their lives. And then one day—I remember we were sitting right in the middle of Washington Square Park—he said we should do it for real. Kidnap someone, torture them—and then murder them. He said that would be the ultimate fantasy. And no one would ever know we did it, he said. Because there’d be no motive. Nothing to ever connect it with us. We’d murder just for the thrill of the kill.
“Well, I got really scared. Even though I still never believed he was serious. Yet he was so intense about it. I told him I’d play the game with him. I was afraid to do anything else. But I vowed that I’d never see him again. And that’s what happened. That day was the last time we ever talked.
“Then, maybe a year or so later—after he was arrested for all those murders—I checked the date of the killings. The first one was right after our conversation in the park. He’d been planning it all along.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t go to the police?”
“No. I was afraid. I didn’t want to get involved. I thought they might think I had something to do with the murders. I had my whole life ahead of me, my career, my future—I didn’t want to get dragged into a murder scandal. Besides, Galvin was already caught and behind bars. He’d confessed to all the murders. There was no reason I had to tell my story.”
“And that day in the park—it was the last time you ever talked to him?” I asked.
“No, there was one more meeting. I ran into Galvin in the library a month or two later. I said hello to him and asked how he was doing. But he was very cold and unfriendly. He said he’d found some new friends—and he didn’t need me anymore. Then he just walked away. I never saw him again.”
“He didn’t mention Arthur Dodson and Linda Hiller’s name to you, did he?”
“No.”
“And you never heard of either one before?”
“No, I never knew them.”
It wasn’t hard to figure out what happened. Galvin had befriended Hiller and Dodson with the same mesmerizing charm he had used on Lisa earlier. They’d probably played along with his little games for a while too. Until they realized how insane he really was. Then they had stopped seeing him—and probably forgot all about him for a long time. Until he was arrested for the murders. And they realized the enormity of his evil. And that they had played a small part in helping him plan his deadly spree.
Just like Lisa, they didn’t want to get involved.
So they put it out of their minds.
They got on with their lives.
I remembered what David Galvin had told me that day I’d visited him. “The rest of the Great Pretenders—they’re all happy, they’re successful, they have new lives. They’ve forgotten all about me. But I’ve never forgotten about them. Tell them that.”
Except there never were any Great Pretenders.
They only existed in David Galvin’s mind.
Arthur Dodson. Linda Hiller. Lisa Montero. In the end, David Galvin decided to seek revenge against them all because he thought they had failed him.
They had to die.
David Galvin’s final game.
But who was killing them?
And who had killed the people on his list—including my own wife and son—who died after Galvin was safely behind bars?
If it wasn’t Lisa, then there was someone else still out there.
“I think I’ve figured out most of the Connie Reyes business,” I said to Lisa.
We were sitting inside now. In the same living room where I’d talked with John Montero. The giant projection screen TV was on again too. There was a newscast on. The woman reading the news looked like she was about ten feet tall.
“Your father set up everything, didn’t he?” I said. “Sent me the notes, in the same style poetry that Felix the Cat used to use. Pointed me in the direction of Corman and the Raphael woman, so they could play their parts. Then, after their performance was over, someone killed them. To keep them quiet, I suppose. Just like someone tried to keep me quiet by trying to run me down.”
“My father had nothing to do with their deaths,” she said. “He was as upset as anybody when he heard about it.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me so.”
“And you believed him?”
“He was my father.”
She said it like she was talking about Ward Cleaver or somebody.
“Of course, you had the star performance, Lisa,” I said. “You had to bat your eyes at me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear and even take me to bed. It must have been really disgusting for you. But I guess it was better than the alternative—a life behind bars.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that, Joe. I know it started out that way. You see, my father said he’d dealt with the justice system before, and just being innocent wasn’t enough. He said you always had to have an edge. I was scared. So I did what he told me to do. But then, after I was with you, I wasn’t acting anymore. I realized that I . . .”
I made a face. “Don’t tell me,” I said, with as much sarcasm and derision as I could put into my voice. “You fell in love with me . . .”
“Something like that,” she said.
She reached over and put her hand on mine. I took it away immediately. No way I was going to get fooled by this woman again.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “I didn’t mind lying to you in the beginning. But then . . . after we . . . well, things changed. I wanted to tell you the truth. But I couldn’t.”
“Oh, you could have. You just didn’t.”
“Those things we did together, Joe,” she said, “I couldn’t have done them . . . I couldn’t have been like that with you in bed unless I really meant it. We were good together. I really liked being with you. I liked you. I couldn’t fake it that much. I’m not that good an actress.”
“So why did you cut me out of your life after the court decision?”
“My father made me do that.”
“How?”
“How? He told me to stop seeing you. He said I should have nothing to do with you anymore.”
“And you agreed?”
“I had to. You really didn’t know my father, Joe. He was a very powerful man—and a very scary one. Most of the people he worked with were frightened to death of him. That’s one of the reasons he was so successful. He built his business empire on fear just as much as he did on business smarts. He even terrified me when he got angry. I never was able to stand up to him. But it wasn’t just me. I was afraid if I didn’t do what he wanted, he wouldn’t just take it out on me. He might go after . . .”
“Me?”
“Yes,” she said.
I thought about the bodies of Corman and Raphael lying in that bloody car in a parking garage in midtown Manhattan.
About Greg Ackerman’s father and the federal witness who had suddenly changed his story the day he was supposed to testify against William Franze a long time ago.
About the guy who didn’t want to sell his business to Montero that turned up in the East River a few days later.
But now John Montero was dead too.
So was Lisa’s brother and her mother. Three deaths in one family within the past year. And it would have been four—except Lisa got into an argument with William Franze and left early the night he was murdered.
But who was doing all the killing? And why? Lisa was the only one left, but I really couldn’t believe it was her. There was still one more player in this game that I had to find.
The newscaster on the giant TV screen began to deliver an item about police searching for leads in the murder of Wall Street m
ogul John Montero. Lisa reached over to the remote and shut it off.
“I hate that big television,” she muttered.
“Why do you have it?”
“My father loved it.”
“You could get a smaller one now.”
“No, I could never get rid of this.”
“Why?”
“Too many memories.”
I knew what she meant. Her father loved that TV. Now her father was gone. But when she looked at it, it reminded her of him. I did the same thing with Susan and Joe. I never cleaned their closets out until six months after they were dead. We always hold onto our memories. Clothes. Pictures. Letters. It’s our last link to people we love who are dead.
Even bad people.
Like David Galvin.
Chapter 62
Barbara Galvin looked as if she’d been expecting me when I showed up at her door.
Eleven years ago, her world turned upside down when she discovered that her son was a monster. She tried to forget about him, to wipe out all the memories—and get on with her life. But she could never do that. It wasn’t over yet.
David Galvin was still her son, no matter how hard she tried to deny that.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Galvin.”
We went into the living room where we’d been before. Just the two of us this time. Her husband was at work, she told me. I looked over at the picture of him with his family on the wall next to her. Him and his wife. Their two daughters. No pictures of David though. Those had been taken down a long time ago.
Outside, through the picture window in the living room, I saw the quiet suburban neighborhood where a little boy had grown up to become a terrifying killer like Felix the Cat.
Expensive houses. Nicely manicured lawns. Good people. Next door, two kids were throwing a baseball back and forth. The Galvins’ dog was sitting in the driveway, barking at the kids and at cars that drove by. Above him I saw the basketball hoop still on the front of their garage. An old, rusted basketball hoop.
