Текст книги "American Devil"

Автор книги: Oliver Stark

Соавторы: Oliver Stark
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Chapter Twenty-Two

OCME

November 19, 2.02 p.m.

Out in East Manhattan later that day, at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Tom Harper and Eddie Kasper were led into the blue-tiled morgue for Jessica Pascal’s autopsy. It was windowless and claustrophobic, with great banks of white and steel drawers.

Closets of the dead.

Robert Toumi, the diener, had worked for the OCME for twelve years. He pointed across to the autopsy room. ‘We’ve not even got her on the slab, gentlemen. Laura’s scrubbing up. You’re welcome to watch me work, but it ain’t pretty.’ He went across to a body bag on a gurney. ‘I’ve weighed her and she’s had an X-ray. Pretty busted up by the look of it. Gangbangers, was it?’

Kasper shook his head as Toumi wheeled the gurney through to the autopsy room. The two detectives followed silently. It was never nice being inside the morgue. Dead or alive.

In the centre of the room, the stainless steel autopsy table shone clean and bright. Kasper took a sideways glance at the instrument table and began to feel less than comfortable. Bone saws, hammers, scalpel. Kasper suddenly jumped.

‘Jesus, man, that’s a fucking pair of garden secateurs!’

Toumi laughed. ‘Gardening equipment is cheaper than surgical stuff, often better too. The ribs can be a little tough.’

‘That’s not right,’ Kasper said and took out his shades. He put them on. He would be able to close his eyes if it got too much.

Toumi rolled the gurney beside the autopsy table and unzipped the body bag. ‘Seeing as you’re so quick on the case, I’m figuring this ain’t your average murder. What’s the situation? She been cut down by the new psychopath in town?’

‘That’s what we want you guys to tell us,’ said Kasper, watching intently as Toumi lifted and dropped the corpse’s feet on to the steel and then humped the upper body half on to the slab.

‘You got to roughhouse these babies,’ the diener said, yanking the torso across and letting it drop unceremoniously. ‘This one’s only a hundred twenty-two pounds. You should see how I get the obese ones on the slab. I played football in my younger days – you ever watched a linebacker sack a corpse?’

‘I imagine it ain’t like watching the salsa,’ said Harper.

The floor, like the dissection table, was sloped slightly towards a drain. A hose in the corner indicated how they did their cleaning. The whole room smelled of disinfectant. On the gurney, Jessica’s naked pale blue corpse glowed under the strong lamps.

Harper hadn’t seen a corpse on the slab for a while. He felt a stab of anger and breathed deeply. There was nothing more liable to make you question your belief in the soul than a lifeless, mutilated corpse.

Dr Laura Pense entered dressed like someone about to do a spot of riot control. She was wearing a plastic face shield, surgical scrubs and gloves. She’d worked with Manhattan North for five years, and knew the team well.

‘How you doing, guys? You want to watch some theatre? I understand this is an important one for you.’ She looked at the corpse. ‘Is this our American Devil? I’ve had three of his girls through here already. You get to know the work. You in a hurry?’

Harper nodded. ‘We’re pushed, yeah. I was just about to go see if there’s anything like this on ViCAP. I don’t know what to input: I’ve no idea how they died. Just wondered if you could give me a sense of what happened.’

‘I will in about four hours, Detective.’

‘We’ll be back in four, Laura, but if there’s anything you can tell us now, we’d appreciate it.’

Laura Pense turned and winked at them. ‘Let’s see what I can do.’ She looked at the corpse. ‘This is quite some overkill, I can tell you that.’ Toumi handed her the X-rays in an envelope. She opened them and flicked through them quickly. ‘Someone’s been tossing this body around like a rag doll. Jesus, that would take some strength.’

Harper looked down at the red-stained corpse of Jessica Pascal. Kasper was looking at the floor, his eyes concealed by his shades.

‘What happened?’ asked Laura.

‘A nice apartment in Yorkville out near the East River. The victim was left at the door, just like a cat leaves a dead bird. You can see what the killer did to her.’ Harper looked down at the woman again. Her face was blood-splattered, her body a strange livid purple with slits the colour of eggplant. What kind of monster could do this?

‘You think it was just one killer?’ asked Laura.

‘We aren’t making any assumptions.’

Deputy CME Laura Pense was sharp and to the point. She was a first-rate forensic pathologist and destined for any job she wanted in the city.

‘Right, ready for your four-minute autopsy?’

Laura turned on her Dictaphone, checked the microphone at her lapel, then read the tag on the corpse’s toe.

‘Dr Laura Pense, November 19, OCME, New York City. Body number CNZ14135. In attendance, Robert Toumi and Detectives Harper and Kasper from the NYPD Homicide. Initial inspection of the body.’

Laura did a quick once-over, took the plastic bags off the corpse’s hands and looked closely under the fingernails. She examined the scratches, and started to mark wounds.

‘This is going to take some unravelling, gentlemen. But she’s got upward of sixty stab wounds. Deep wounds on the right side of her neck. Breasts sliced upward through the pectoral muscle and removed. He must’ve used a variety of knives. Finger-shaped bruising on the cheek. Several lacerations to the heart area with shallow striations – slash marks. Several deep wounds to the abdomen. But the majority of the wounds are shallow. Teaser wounds. And a number of torture wounds crossing the veins. He was probably cutting her for a good while. She probably died from the neck wound, but he continued. He’s getting to enjoy time with these bodies.’

She leaned in and looked closely at the corpse’s arm, then looked up at both men. ‘There’s a print of his lips here and here. Looks like he was sipping at the wounds – or kissing them. We need to get Latent Prints down here.’ She examined the woman’s lower abdomen. ‘Open her legs for me, Robert. Foreign object inserted into the vagina. He’s been working down here too. Robert, get me the forceps. Okay. Okay. Yes, I think I know what this is.’

Laura attached the forceps to the end of the object and slowly pulled it out. Harper watched closely, his face impassive. Kasper’s eyes were shut tight.

‘Petals. It’s a flower of some kind,’ said the doctor and pulled the forceps out. She placed the bloody cherry blossom on the autopsy table.

‘That’s not nice,’ she said. ‘That’s no way to give a girl flowers.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

East Harlem

November 19, 2.13 p.m.

The killer was disguised as a doctor and had assumed the name Dr Mark Keys. He was feeling good about life and was smiling as he parked up and got out of his car. He looked at the worn-out building ahead. It was a flat-roofed, unimpressive two-storey building that must’ve housed between twenty and thirty rehabilitating inmates. A halfway house for the half insane.

The killer looked at his hands and noticed a line of blood under his fingernails. He suddenly felt his stomach tingle with excitement again. He’d spent the morning with his girls. He’d been working on The Progression of Love. He’d be a world-famous artist one day. His works would last for centuries.

Four clear glass vitrines were already complete, the first containing the eyes of girl number one, the second with the hair of girl number two, the third containing the heart of girl number three, the fourth the breasts of girl number four, which the police had just discovered were missing.

His photographs and news stories were pasted up behind the vitrines. The latest was a large photograph of Jessica Pascal, smiling, staring right at him. She was wearing an old dress he had taken to the scene and looked just like a girl he once knew. The killer felt he had perfected his art. It was just as he dreamed. He could bring her back to life, love her again and, more important, kill her all over again.

The man disguised as Dr Keys shuffled his shiny black shoes in the dirt and walked across to the green front door. It had metal bars across it, but it was wedged open. Dr Keys walked right in and up to the small reception desk.

A black lady at the counter didn’t look up. Not nice, thought Keys – doesn’t matter who you are, you ought to be polite. He slapped his ID down in front of her. He hadn’t intended to, but her arrogance annoyed him.

‘Dr Mark Keys, senior investigator for the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Do you always ignore your guests, miss?’

Her eyes rose to meet his. ‘We ain’t under your jurisdiction, Doctor, and the name is Felicity Adams.’

‘No, but your patients are. You recently admitted a psychiatric patient released from Manhattan State.’ He looked at her. ‘Yes or no, Miss Adams?’

‘Yes. I’m sure we have.’

‘Under the revised release accreditation guidance, halfway units need to ensure secure monitoring arrangements for category three releases.’

‘We don’t worry about curfews and in-and-outs. They look after themselves.’

‘I need to see Mr Carlisle’s room and access arrangements.’

‘Well, he’s in Room 52, so go and help yourself. The access arrangements are right there.’ Her eyes fell to the desk and her extended arm pointed to the door which seemed to be permanently wedged open.

‘The National Enquirer more important to you than the rehabilitation of your residents?’

Miss Adams looked up. ‘Yeah, just about in every way, Doctor.’ She turned over the page.

Dr Keys was genuinely angry with her, but he wanted to keep his anger from getting spoiled, so he looked around for something. He saw her open bag and a faded Volvo key fob. He had information now. She drove an old Volvo. Information was useful. He walked to the stairs and followed a series of green plastic signs leading the way to the rooms.

At Room 52, Dr Keys stopped. Winston Carlisle’s door was wide open and he was lying on the bed staring ahead. Dr Keys entered without knocking.

‘Hello, Winston. I’m Dr Keys from the Manhattan Psychiatric Center. I need to have a conversation with you. We need to do a little work on your rehabilitation.’

Winston held out his hand without looking and Dr Keys shook it. He then leaned forward and handed Winston a small plastic vial.

‘I need a sample, Winston.’

Winston stood up without question and took the small bottle. ‘You gonna let me go back to the hospital?’ he asked as he unzipped himself and urinated into the small bottle.

‘If you’re good I will,’ said Dr Keys.

‘I’m invisible out here. No one sees me. I can just walk right through them.’

‘Well, I can make you visible again, Winston. Don’t you worry.’

Winston nodded. Dr Keys sat down on a small side table and took out a notebook. ‘I’ve got some things I need to go through with you. It’s all in the name of rehabilitation. It’s a new approach to help guys like you reintegrate. What we do, Winston, is ask you to follow some of those urges of yours under close supervision. We monitor your testosterone levels each week and see if there’s a pattern.’

‘You want me to follow my urges?’

‘That’s right, Winston. What we will try to do is watch you and monitor how you act out here in the real world. Then we can see if we understand you a little better. Are you interested?’

Winston stared for a moment and then nodded. ‘I guess.’

Forty minutes later, Dr Keys walked out of the halfway house and took a quick turn around the perimeter of the building. Winston was an obedient patient. He would do as he was told. It was looking like a very good choice. Dr Keys was pleased. Before he left, he had enough time to find the only Volvo in the parking lot and, therefore, the car belonging to Miss Adams.

He took out a small thin blade from his pocket, slipped it under the hood then yanked the engine cover open. He quickly identified the brake feed and cut a nick in the pipe. That would give her perhaps another three hours of driving before, hopefully, she paralysed herself driving across a red light.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Dr Levene’s Office

November 19, 5.30 p.m.

Harper and Eddie took the news from the Medical Examiner back to Williamson and the team. The cherry blossom hidden in Amy’s throat and now inside Jessica showed the killer was enjoying setting a little puzzle for the cops. Harper wondered if the killer was starting his next phase. He had started to communicate with the police and media by posing the corpse and hiding his signature cherry blossom.

Harper took the Mary-Jane file from Williamson’s desk and began looking for some evidence to back up his idea that her killing had not been planned. It took him about an hour to read through the key documents and they seemed to confirm what he’d thought. He took out the interview with Mary-Jane’s school principal. She said that Mary-Jane had left school at 1 p.m. that day, just after the end of the morning session, as she’d forgotten an essay. The killer could not have known that, could he? If he didn’t know that she was going to be home then it might have been a chance meeting. He might have been scoping out her apartment. Harper took out the report from A-Z Security, the company responsible for the elaborate entry procedure at the Samuelson building. It showed that someone entered the apartment on Mrs Samuelson’s card at 12.30 p.m., half an hour before Mary-Jane left for home.

That was the evidence he needed. The killer was in her apartment. He hadn’t followed her in. He didn’t expect her to return. This guy was an obsessive stalker with multiple targets who needed to get closer and closer to his victims just to keep the buzz alive. He felt the need to get so close that he touched them up in the street, took things they owned and even tried to snoop around where they lived and get intimate shots. Then, he took it one step further. He wanted to be in Mary-Jane’s bedroom. He needed to be there, so he broke in. Harper let the situation come to life in his mind. He had been wrong to think that the killer was stalking her that day. How else would the killer know she’d left school early? He didn’t know, did he? She came back early, he was in her room. He saw her. She screamed. He panicked and grabbed her. She had no idea he was a killer and fought hard, but he’d held her easily. He was strong. Nothing was overturned in her apartment, but she had bruises all over her body. The autopsy had found his skin under her fingernails. She had fought him.

He had to stop her or his whole plan would fail. He put his hands round her neck. He just kept them there until she stopped breathing.

Harper knew he was right. That was what happened. An accident. An unfortunate coincidence that he chose to steal into her room on the day she had forgotten her homework and slipped back at lunchtime.

An accident had triggered all his fantasies. And he’d liked it. Christ, he’d really got a taste for it.

Harper had an idea about what they might do. A long shot, but he needed to talk this through with someone who understood criminal behaviour. He needed Dr Levene’s input.

Forty minutes later, Harper hurried up the corridor towards Denise Levene’s office. He needed someone to show him how to unlock the symbols. He pushed straight through the office door and looked directly at her. ‘He didn’t mean to kill Mary-Jane. She disturbed him. I want to know the implications for his behaviour.’

Denise stared up at Harper with a look of surprise. She pointed across to the chair in the middle of the room. ‘I’m with a client, Tom.’

‘Did you not hear me? We need to talk now. He’s killing every couple of days. Grace Frazer on November 14, Amy Lloyd-Gardner on November 16. He killed again last night.’

‘Yeah, I heard it on the radio this morning. Can you give me a moment, Tom? I’m with someone.’

Tom moved towards her desk. ‘How is he keeping up the pace? Psychologically? Is it possible? I’ve never known anything like it.’

Denise stood up and walked round her desk. She smiled at her client, a rookie officer who was now looking more terrified than ever, and put her hand softly on Tom’s shoulder. ‘Can you just step outside for a moment and let me wrap up here?’

Tom only then noticed the cowering figure looking lost in the big black leather chair. He apologized and retreated.

Outside her office, Tom paced. The need to move was more powerful than anything else. He needed to do something. The killer needed to be engaged or flushed out. With the profiler at the New York field office going cold on the case and refusing to take a line, the team was left with old-fashioned detective work – piecing together every piece of available information and looking for something that linked the bodies and crime scenes with the identity of the unsub. But Harper knew, just as the rest of the team knew, that that took time and it was just dawning on them that time was something the killer was using against them. He was leaving them no time to assimilate and process the details before he struck again.

Harper picked up a magazine, flicked through it absently and then threw it back down on the glass table. He looked at his watch, and then, right beside it, the thick green attitude band that Denise Levene had somehow got him to agree to wear at the end of the last session. He put it on after the fiasco at Erin Nash’s apartment. Denise was right, he got angry a lot. Now he was feeling the anger burning up inside him, so he pulled the elastic back and let it slap hard against his wrist. It twanged and stung. He did it once more. Yeah, it distracted him momentarily.

Denise appeared at the door of her office with the rookie, who made a big detour as he walked away to avoid Tom Harper’s great brooding figure. Denise was feeling excited rather than annoyed. The case had been keeping her awake since Tom had talked about it the previous morning and now he was here unprompted. She’d pieced together what she knew about the killer but she needed detailed crime scene information if she was going to be able to help. Maybe Tom Harper would fill in some of the missing pieces.

She beckoned him into her office. She saw his right hand twisting the attitude band and smiled. ‘How’s the anger management?’

‘I’m still angry,’ he said.

She shook her head with mock disapproval. ‘I know what you’re going to tell me.’

‘What?’

‘You didn’t twang.’

‘I feel stupid twanging.’

‘But if you don’t twang, there’s no psychological movement. There’s no learning. Listen . . .’

Tom smiled broadly. He couldn’t help it. He liked it when she was earnest, even if he didn’t buy into all the CBT shit. Still smiling, he twanged, looking directly into her eyes. Then he twanged again.

‘Yeah, yeah, I get it, you’re thinking I’m just a quack with stupid ideas.’

‘I need to talk about the case, not myself,’ he said.

‘Okay. Talk me through the victims.’

‘He disempowers them by force or fear, then he rapes them and tortures them. His preferred method of killing them is asphyxiation. Then he takes something.’ Tom paused. ‘He took Mary-Jane Samuelson’s eyes, Grace Frazer’s hair, Amy Lloyd-Gardner’s heart, Jessica Pascal’s breasts. He poses them. Mary and Grace were posed to humiliate, with their legs apart. He posed Amy and Jessica in quasi-religious poses and added a line of poetry to each. He leaves cherry blossom at every scene. Sorry. It’s not nice.’

Levene pulled her Powerbook across the glass table and clicked a couple of times. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I want to help you get back out there and catch this monster. You know my research. We were trying to detect early neurological signs in these killers, so I spent time working with these guys.’

‘What happened?’

‘If I’m honest, I couldn’t handle seeing them close up. Hey, Tom, just so you know – I’ve got baggage that would put yours to shame. I’m just better at the makeover than you are. All I’m saying is that I got to know a thing or two about profiling killers. That’s why I took this job, to find out more about them from you guys.’

‘A profile can’t work in all cases. This guy defies profiling.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. The key is, Tom, to isolate the important points from the noise.’

‘How?’

‘Look, your killer is working on all kinds of different levels. He’s taking psychological reminders, he’s hiding himself from the victims, he’s sexualizing and degrading them, he’s also romancing them and then giving them some afterlife. It’s a lot of detail.’

‘Don’t we know it.’

‘Look, we just got to work facts and deductions from facts. Deductions, you know – necessary factual conclusions, not guesses.’

‘I get you. If you can work up a profile, we can see if we can use it. But I need something else.’

‘What?’

‘I got a strong feeling that Mary-Jane wasn’t premeditated.’ He paused and looked across to her. ‘I think he’s been getting closer to these women and he broke into Mary-Jane’s apartment to be near to her stuff, maybe even take something. But she came back unexpectedly, and then I think things went bad.’

‘In many cases I’ve studied, the killer isn’t sure what he’s going to do until he interacts with the victim. It depends on the victim’s reaction. Sometimes the killer sees no way out except by silencing them, especially if they struggle. It can trigger a very aggressive reaction. It’s self-protection.’

‘But he got a taste. He liked it.’

‘Yeah, this guy really liked it.’

‘The thing I’m thinking, Denise, is this. If I’m right, then we’ve got a piece of useful information about him. You know, something that we might use to lure him in, maybe even get him to speak to us. You think that’s possible?’

‘You want to interact with him?’

‘There’s a greater chance of finding him if we can get him to talk to us. I want to know if he’s responding to what we say. Can you help with this?’

‘Yeah, but I’ve got to understand him a little better.’

‘Okay, what do you need?’

She smiled thinly. ‘You give me the case files and as a quid pro quo I will try my damnedest to resolve your aggression against women. Not, of course, your aggression against me, which is textbook defensiveness for your psychological weakness. By the look on your face, you’d say that isn’t what’s wrong with you, but I’m here to tell you that’s what you’ve done with all that sadness. Turned it to something hard and unpleasant.’

Tom stared at her. It felt like a relief to hear someone identify things he didn’t dare identify for himself. ‘Okay. We have a deal. I’ll get you the files, but based on what you’ve heard so far, how do you read him?’

‘Well, first off, your killer is focusing on the key romantic symbols from his women. Eyes, hair, heart, breasts – they all have romantic symbolism. He’s afraid of the power that women – or a particular woman – have over him. What they make him feel. He’s afraid of the effect they have on him. If he’s a stalker, then he needs to control not only the women, but the way they excite him. He can go to them or their artefacts or pictures whenever he wants. He wants to neutralize the real threat, though, because he’s been hurt and humiliated by them. You’re looking for someone with a problem relating to strong women. If he’s in a long-term relationship it’ll be with someone weak. He’s smart, too. He’s someone who would be able to hide all of this from the person he lives with.’

‘Will he kill again?’

‘Yes. He’s compulsive. It might be his weakness. Now he’s been triggered, he might just keep on going until you stop him.’

‘What else?’

‘Here’re the thoughts I’ve been having. Forget trying to work out all the noise. Let’s focus on one or two things. Here goes. He attacks women he has stalked, right?’

‘I think so, yes; there’s evidence he’d been stalking. Jessica Pascal was spotted with a tall, handsome guy and Grace Frazer reported a stalker.’

‘He photographs them and takes their clothes. He wants to know them intimately and they’re all quite refined and educated girls. Forget all the symbols. He likes these girls. In his head, he might believe they like him. He might even believe he loves them. My first profile note would be this – your killer is building a relationship with these girls and he also feels bad about what he’s done. The religious posing suggested, to me, a kind of naive attempt at forgiveness. He can’t help what he wants to do, but he tries to absolve himself from it with romance and religion.’

‘So how does that help?’

‘Well, you lost Lisa, didn’t you – what did you do, after she’d gone? Move on and forget?’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘Visited places that reminded me of her.’

‘One thing I can be sure of, he will return to the scenes. He’ll want to continue the buzz it all gives him. That’s why he takes the trophies, to relive the kill.’

‘Yeah. But what can we do? Surveillance? We do that at the crime scenes anyway. It’s standard.’

‘No, not surveillance. You asked me how you could interact, based on your information about Mary-Jane. You need a set-up. ’

‘That’s what I was thinking. Tell him we know Mary-Jane was a mistake, that he can get out of this . . . that kind of thing.’

‘Maybe, but if you want him to talk to you, give him something to talk about. You need to press his buttons.’

‘Go on.’

‘He’s a control freak. How do I know? Because he doesn’t mind hurting these women when they’re alive. A disorganized type would kill them first because he’d be too afraid. This guy can communicate okay. Perhaps he’s even charming. But the point is, he likes to control everything – including, I’m guessing, his reputation. Part of this is about making society notice him.’

‘I don’t think I follow you,’ said Harper.

‘What we might do is release a statement live on air or through a newspaper and say something that undermines him and makes him look weak or even uncontrolled. Piss him off.’

Harper’s mind started to work on the idea. ‘Maybe we could get Erin Nash to run the story, if we promise to give her Williamson for an exclusive. What do you recommend, Doctor?’

‘Go with the paper, but it needs TV too. He needs to see someone bad-mouthing him. He’ll need it to be personal. Let’s set up a press conference and follow it up with an article from Nash. That covers all bases. Can you get it cleared?’

‘I can try. I could do the press conference myself. I’d love to bad-mouth this bastard.’

‘A couple of other things, then. First, tell him you understand the pseudo-intellectual messages he left at the corpses, the kind of messages an uneducated halfwit would leave to make himself look like someone he’s not. You got those poems, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah, random poetry.’

‘You can say this is a message to the poetry-loving American Devil. Say you know where to expect the next kill and when. Say that he’s making errors and leaving a trail and that it’s only a matter of time. Tell him that the NYPD found something at the last crime scene that is central to the investigation and likely to lead to an arrest. Say that he can’t control his emotions and that’s the problem, that’s why he’s making elementary mistakes. And then you’ve got to make that all seem real to him.’

‘How?’

‘By releasing a piece of information about him that will surprise him.’

Harper nodded. Who knew if it would work, but it was worth a go. ‘What do we reveal?’

‘You can reveal the Mary-Jane information. Say that you know what happened. Or else tell him you know that he drives a blue car. A premium brand. Probably a classic model.’

‘And how the hell do you know that?’

Denise raised an eyebrow. ‘Think like him. He’s a low-status guy who wants to look like he’s made it big. He can’t afford a new high-status model because he works in a low income or commission job, but he doesn’t want to be seen to have an old model – what do you do? You go for a classic premium brand: low cost but high status.’

‘Why blue?’

‘That’s the serial killer’s colour of choice. You didn’t know that?’

‘I didn’t know that.’ They both smiled. ‘I like it,’ said Harper. ‘Don’t know if it’ll work but it beats sitting around and waiting. I’ll sell it hard to Lafayette.’

‘Yeah. If you front this up, Harper, remember, he’ll take it personally. And he’s going to be hard pressed to avoid speaking to you. He’ll need to know what you know. You gonna do this?’

It was the first time since the start of the case that someone had spoken any sense about this killer. Tom smiled. ‘Consider it done,’ he said.