Thirteen_The serial killer isn’t on trial. He’s on the jury

by Steve Cavanagh

  “Take us out of here. There’s a Holiday Inn a mile away. Park there and I won’t hurt you,” said Kane, removing the knife from his pants pocket and placing it in his lap.

  Pryor revved the engine, his foot too heavy on the accelerator, as he stared at the knife – Kane told him to calm down. They pulled out and drove for a few minutes, until they reached the Holiday Inn. All the while Pryor was panting, pleading for his life.

  They parked in a dark corner of the deserted back lot. The Holiday Inn was a thousand yards away.

  “I need your clothes and your car. I’ll let you have your wallet. It’s a short walk to the Holiday Inn across the lot. If you refuse, I’ll have to take it by force.”

  He didn’t need to ask him twice. He stripped to his underwear, tossing the clothes in the back of the car, as Kane had instructed.

  “Now get out of the car,” said Kane.

  Pryor opened the door and Kane could see the temperature hit him straight away. He stood, in his shoes and socks holding himself against the cold in the dark, empty parking lot.

  “My wallet,” said Pryor.

  Kane climbed into the driver’s seat, closed the door, rolled down the window and dropped the wallet onto the asphalt.

  Pryor came closer, bent down to pick up his wallet. As he stood up he came face to face with Kane, staring out at Pryor.

  He froze. His legs quivered, shook, then Kane drew his knife from Pryor’s left eye socket and let his body fall.

  Quickly, Kane dressed in Pryor’s clothes. They were too big, but it didn’t matter much. Within a few minutes, Kane was headed toward Manhattan in the Aston Martin. He couldn’t allow the FBI to interfere with his pattern. He had a man to kill.

  And nothing could stop him.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  SWAT found the room that had been occupied by Bradley Summers empty. The window had been left open. The SWAT leader had climbed out onto the roof, looked around and noticed footprints in the snow, leading away from a snow bank that had been disturbed. Just to be sure, Delaney ordered a bricks and mortar search of the hotel and grounds. It took a half-hour, and by the time the feds had finished they were satisfied that they’d pissed off every resident of the hotel, and that the footprints had led to the road leaving the Inn and there was no sign Dollar Bill had doubled back.

  Joshua Kane was in the wind.

  The speed at which the FBI worked was fascinating and frightening. Within minutes of the completed search, all law enforcement agencies were notified of the alert. Harper arrived. She’d found two photographs in newspaper clippings. What looked like the same man, in his late fifties, was captured in both. One leaving a courthouse, the other entering the courthouse. The man was in the background of the shot on both occasions. Different hair color, different clothes, but the facial features were roughly the same. With the exception of the broken nose that Summers had, it was the same man. Delaney and I sat in the command vehicle and studied the pictures. Harry was still trying to get Pryor to answer his cell phone. Bobby was headed for a mistrial. No doubt about it.

  “Where would he run to?” said Delaney, studying the pictures.

  “Maybe back to Bradley Summers’ apartment?” said Harper.

  “I’ve got an agent headed there now, but it’s a long shot. This guy didn’t survive undetected for so long by making rookie mistakes.”

  “It’s incredible that he’s gotten away with this. I mean, he’s been doing this for decades,” replied Harper.

  It galled me that law enforcement had let it happen. Maybe that was the way of things. Nearly every homicide department in every city, in every state, was overworked. They followed the evidence all the way. They didn’t have time to question it too much. In a way, it wasn’t their fault. They’d been manipulated by a highly intelligent, cold-blooded killer and they simply didn’t have time to consider alternatives. All the same, Dollar Bill probably had his fair share of luck to get this far. So many victims. All in aid of some kind of seriously screwed-up vision of his own.

  I thought about everything I knew about Kane. The murders. The trials. The victims. The pattern and the Great Seal.

  No way this guy was going to let it all fall apart. He wanted to complete his mission.

  “Harper, call Holten. Right now. This crazy asshole is driven and meticulous. He’s going to try to end this on his terms. I think Kane’s going after Bobby,” I said.

  Three minutes later I was in the passenger seat of Harper’s rental car, my hands spread out on the dash while Harper followed the SWAT van and weaved in and out of traffic, riding the wake of the sirens.

  “Try Holten’s cell again,” I said.

  Harper used the voice command for her cell phone, which rattled around in a well on the dash. I saw the screen light up, reflected on the windshield, and the dial tone echoed through the car’s Bluetooth system.

  No answer.

  “I’ll try Bobby again,” I said.

  I called him. His cell must have been switched off. At least Holten’s was ringing. All we needed was for him to pick up the damn phone.

  “The cops must be on their way by now, anyway,” said Harper.

  Before we left, Delaney had put an urgent call in to NYPD to attend at Bobby’s property and check he was okay. They would be there any minute. She’d also called for a field agent from Federal Plaza to get over there and make sure the place was locked down.

  From Jamaica to Midtown Manhattan usually took close to an hour in a car. We crossed the Queens Midtown Expressway in just under ten minutes, and that familiar skyline loomed ahead; the United Nations Building lit up like a postcard just beyond the Midtown tunnel.

  Harper’s cell buzzed. It was Delaney.

  “NYPD just called. They talked to Solomon’s security. It’s all quiet. I’ve asked PD to send the squad car away and I’ve told my agent to pull back. We’re going to blaze the sirens through the tunnel then we’re going to go silent. I’ll be switching to an unmarked car and sweeping the area. Kane hasn’t made it to Solomon’s house yet, and if he’s there and watching the property, I don’t want to spook him.”

  “Agreed,” said Harper, “but there’s no harm in Eddie and me paying a visit, is there?”

  “Let me sweep it first. Then I’ll let you know. By the way, I just heard from forensics on the DNA profile we took from the Wynn notebook with Kane’s fingerprints on it. The DNA processing isn’t complete, and won’t be for another ten hours, but early results are a fit for Richard Pena, our dead man whose DNA was on the bill in Tozer’s mouth. Once the profile is complete we’ll know for sure. I’ll need you to update me on where you’ve got to with Pena’s profile, Harper. There’s a link somewhere to Kane,” said Delaney.

  We lost all phone signals as soon as we entered the tunnel. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have been able to take my hands off the dash anyway, not the way Harper drove; hugging the tail of the SWAT vehicle at seventy-five miles an hour with cars and a wall within inches of us on either side. I wanted to ask Harper about Pena’s DNA, and what she’d discovered, but I was too scared about crashing into the wall if I distracted her.

  Once out of the tunnel, the panic was over. We pulled in on 38th street, one block away from Bobby’s rental and waited. This part of Midtown was a pretty quiet area. The residents were mostly dentists and doctors. The cars that lined the sidewalk were either high-end SUVs or sports cars for the dentists going through their mid-life crises.

  “Did you get anywhere on the Pena DNA?” I said.

  “I did. Richard Pena was identified as the Chapel Hill killer from his DNA profile. His DNA matched a profile on a dollar bill. Fourteen hundred men in the area volunteered their DNA. Pena was one of them. The cop in Chapel Hill said that because so many men came forward they couldn’t cope with collecting the DNA swabs. They had to train up campus security officers to take swabs from the college faculty, staff and students. A security officer named Russell McPartland testified that he took the swab from Pena, sealed it
and gave it to the police. I got a cop from Chapel Hill PD wading through the university’s personnel files as we speak.”

  “How do you get cops to do all this for you?” I said.

  She flashed a smile, said, “I can be persuasive.”

  I didn’t doubt it. I figured Russell McPartland for another alias of Joshua Kane. He couldn’t commit all those murders so cleanly every single time. Sooner or later he was going to leave behind DNA. My guess was he got a job at campus security under an assumed name. Job like that would give him unfettered access to a trusting, female student body. When there was a killer on the loose, vulnerable young women would be more likely to trust a campus security officer if he approached them, or offered to escort them home. But then, he’d messed up. Kane must have left his own DNA on one of the dollars found with a victim. He would’ve known it as soon as the Police Department called for DNA samples from the males in the area. Only Kane had used this to his advantage. He’d taken a swab from Pena, the janitor. Easy as rubbing a cotton bud around the inside of Pena’s cheek, and sealing it in a tube. But Kane must have substituted Pena’s sample for his own. So that Kane’s sample was incorrectly logged as Pena’s. The Pena DNA profile was actually Kane’s. Pena couldn’t afford a defense attorney – and no one would represent the Chapel Hill strangler pro bono. No public defender’s office in those days was going to blow its budget on retesting DNA.

  That’s why the sample on the dollar in Tozer’s mouth came back as Pena’s. It couldn’t have been Pena who’d touched the bill because he was already dead. It was Kane’s DNA all along – which he’d had labeled, at source as Pena’s.

  Pretty smart.

  I figured all campus security officers would have photo ID logged in their personnel files. I was waiting on Harper’s contact pulling up a picture of Kane on the ID for Russell McPartland.

  There was no other explanation.

  Harper’s cell phone rang and she picked up. Delaney’s voice played on the car stereo.

  “We’ve swept the street and a five-block radius. No sign of Kane. There’s a few people wandering around, but nothing out the ordinary. People on their way home from nightclubs and bars, couple of junkies in blankets at the end of the block, there’s even a guy parked outside O’Brien’s pub sleeping off a bellyful in the passenger seat of his Aston Martin. We’re watching now, but there’s no sign of Kane. Not yet.”

  “Is it okay if I go see Bobby?” I said.

  “Sure, but don’t be too long,” said Delaney, and hung up.

  “You go. I’ll drop you off and park up on the street,” said Harper.

  We drove around to 39th street, Bobby’s house was halfway along. I thought about Bobby and how he would react to what I had to say. I was pretty sure I could get the case against him kicked out of court in the morning if the feds caught Bill tonight. So much had happened. Arnold was dead and I hadn’t even had time to process it. Somehow, Kane had set me up for Arnold’s murder with another dollar.

  “Stop the car,” I said.

  “What?” said Harper.

  “Stop right now. I need you to call the cop in Chapel Hill. Kane hasn’t just been riding his luck all these years,” I said.

  Harper called the cop. We waited. He answered and said he’d just found the file on the campus security guard named McPartland. He was going to email it to Harper in the morning, but she persuaded him to take pictures of the file on his phone and send them via SMS. The cop had come through. I called Delaney, laid it all out for her.

  At last, all of the pieces fitted together. We talked it over for ten minutes, then Harper let me out of the car outside Bobby’s house. It was a nondescript Brownstone. Perfect neighborhood for hiding from a media storm.

  I walked up the steps and knocked on Bobby’s front door. The cold scraped at my cheeks, and I blew into my hands. Holten answered the door, and I could feel the heat pouring out of the house.

  He was still in his black suit pants, and tie. He’d lost the jacket. I felt reassured to see he still wore his sidearm. A Glock in a pancake holster, slung onto his belt.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “I feel like shit. Is Bobby alright?”

  “Come in, he’s upstairs. Any news?”

  I stepped inside, past Holten and was immediately grateful when he closed the door behind me. I didn’t have my overcoat with me, and the short walk from the car to the door had sent me shivering. Thankfully, the morphine was still doing its job, otherwise I’d be crippled with the pain from my busted ribs.

  The hallway was dark, but light spilled into the corners from the living room. I heard a baseball game on the TV. I stepped aside, let Holten pass me.

  “Go on up and see him. He’s on the second floor. I recorded the game. Just catching up. Might as well. I don’t feel so exposed with the feds parked outside. I can kind of relax a little, you know?” said Holten.

  I nodded, “Sure. It’s been a tough few days. I think things have finally swung in Bobby’s favor. Hopefully this will be over soon.”

  Holten had already turned away and was headed back into the living room. I saw him flop down onto a big couch in front of a massive flatscreen as he said, “Did you get the guy? Dollar Bill?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I think we have enough to get a mistrial at least. If we catch him, I think we’ll get an acquittal.”

  I saw Holten crack open a bottle of beer and hold it out to me.

  “You want one? You look like you could use it,” he said.

  He was right. I could use it. And twenty more alongside of it.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  I went upstairs, found the first floor, followed the landing to the staircase leading up and called out to Bobby.

  No answer. When I got to the top of the flight of stairs, I felt cold again. The lights were off, and I figured Bobby might be in bed. An icy breeze brushed my cheek. The window looking out onto the street was open. I walked over to it, silently. Peered out. The window was open maybe a foot or so, and it led out onto the fire escape. I stuck my head out, looked around. No one above me or below me on the fire escape.

  I ducked back inside and a hand clamped over my mouth, forcing my head back. For a second, I didn’t move. My breath had already left my body. My instinct was to grab the wrist, back into my attacker and pivot around, trapping his wrist behind his back.

  That’s when I felt something sharp at my back. The tip of a knife.

  I brought my eyes down to the window. There, reflected in the glass, was juror Bradley Summers. He stood behind me, but I could see his face. He was staring at the reflection too, meeting my gaze. I could still hear the distant voices of the commentators on TV downstairs.

  I didn’t dare move. If I did, there would be no doubt of the outcome. Kane would push that blade through my back.

  My phone was still in my jacket. If I could reach it, I might be able to voice call Harper, like I did in the back of the police car just hours ago.

  All these thoughts floated through my mind in a second. And then I realized Kane had probably had the exact same thoughts. He was studying me in the glass, checking my reaction. His head moved closer, and I could feel his breath in my ear as he hissed at me.

  “Don’t move. Don’t even think about moving or calling for help. You’re going to die tonight, Flynn. The only question is how slow, and whether I kill that pretty investigator of yours. If you want it to be quick and painless, I can oblige. You just have to do as I say.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Kane could feel Flynn’s heartbeat. With his left hand pressed tightly over Flynn’s mouth, his forearm was also pressing into the neck. There it was again. That rush. That glorious pulse – alive and beating that familiar drum of fear and adrenaline.

  “I’m going to take my hand away. You’re going to do exactly what I say. Do not shout out. Do not say a thing. One word, one whisper, and I’ll kill you. Then I’ll kill her, the investigator. Only this time I’ll do it slow. I’ll peel her
skin till she begs me to die. If you understand, nod your head,” said Kane.

  Flynn nodded, once.

  Kane relaxed his grip, took his hand away from Flynn’s mouth. The lawyer took a huge breath. The panic was almost suffocating.

  “With one hand, I want you to take out your phone and drop it on the floor,” said Kane.

  Flynn reached into his jacket pocket, took out a cell phone and let it fall. It bounced twice on the thick, carpeted floor, with little or no sound.

  Kane took a step back and said, “The door on your right. Open it and go inside.”

  Flynn turned, opened the door and stepped into a dark bedroom. The curtains weren’t drawn, so a little of the streetlight still managed to illuminate the room in a dim, yellow glow. A bed sat on the right. Straight ahead was a heavy, cast-iron door.

  It was shut. A security camera with a red dot above it sat just above the door. It was pointed downwards, to pick up the area immediately outside the security door.

  Kane stepped toward the door, and waited at the threshold of the bedroom.

  “Solomon managed to get to the panic room before I could get to him. I need you to persuade him to come out. He’s watching you on the camera. Tell him I’ve gone. Tell him the police are here and he’s safe. Get him out of there now, please,” said Kane.

  The lawyer didn’t move. Kane saw him studying the table next to the door. There was a lamp on it, and a phone. The phone cable led down the back of the table to a socket in the wall for the landline. Beside the panic room door, a cable cover ran to the same socket. The cover had been ripped off the wall, and the cable that ran to the landline had been cut. This was an old panic room, probably built before the telephone connection was installed. There was no way to drill through the concrete for a connection, the wire had to be run out of the room to the socket. Kane was still thankful for that. He’d managed to cut the wire before Solomon could make the call from the phone inside the panic room.