A Cruel Season for Dying (6 page)

“Anytime.” He made the word an obvious invitation.

Geoffrey Westlake smiled back and killed the remainder of his drink.

“Gad-ri-el.” He spoke the syllables separately and distinctly, gathering his focus. It still amazed him how vibrations made
in air could so nearly capture essence. But his name had been the first thing to come back to him that night, when the world
had cracked like an egg. And he had remembered.

“Gadriel.” For a moment the grief and the loneliness he had felt that night returned, and he was there again, trapped within
the blackness of the tunnel. He pushed away the despair. “Gadriel.” His name three times spoken, transforming him, grounding
him in the present reality of black ceramic tile and gleaming fixtures.

He looked around the bathroom. The sublet was as posh as Westlake had bragged, the bath as large as some entire city apartments.
He sat down on the sleek toilet and took off his cap and shoes. Grabbed a towel from the warming rack and spread it out over
the floor. Standing in its center, he removed the rest of his clothes, rolling them into tight tubes that he stuffed into
the camera bag along with his other things.

He turned toward his image in the mirrored wall, the reflection of his human shell at once alien and familiar. Tall and naturally
thin, he would appear ectomorphic to anyone seeing him with clothes. Actually, he was well muscled and fit again after the
long months of rehabilitation. Before going out tonight, he had once again shaved his armpits, chest, and pubis. And standing
completely still, his nude body in its leather harness seemed as perfect and white as marble against the backdrop of black
tile.

He walked closer to the glass, running his hands over the hair he had lacquered against his skull. Light streamed through
his pores, nearly obscuring his features.

“Trick or treat.” Westlake’s amused voice came from the other side of the door. “I’ve got your drink out here.”

He said nothing. But stepped aside, and carefully picking up the towel like an inverted tent, he shook out over the bowl any
fibers that might have come from his clothes. He flushed, watching the water spiral down.

He had been careful to touch nothing in the room, and now he put on the latex gloves. Much later, with his shoes on again,
he would wipe the tile floor of any footprints. He stooped down to the camera bag, unzipping another compartment. When he
rose, the gas mask was on his face. Even to his own eyes, he looked like a monster in the mirror.

A
voiding the elevators, which were always slow and crowded, Sakura walked down the hallway from the chief of detectives’ office
to the stairwell. Let the door suck closed behind him like an air lock.

His meeting this morning with Lincoln McCauley had gone as well as could be expected, given the atmosphere of official panic
that always developed around this kind of case. This morning’s
Post
story had not helped with its lurid speculation that a new serial killer might be preying on the city’s gay population. Worse,
it was obvious that the leaks had begun. He had to expect that the press would put two and two together, but the
Post
article had gone way beyond what could be gleaned from public record. Witnesses, such as Greenberg and Lambert, had apparently
begun to talk. Or his own people. When the precinct detectives working the Carrera and Milne murders had been subsumed under
the Special Homicide Unit, he had given them all the usual speech about leaks. But it was nearly impossible with the number
of people involved to keep a case with this sort of media appeal completely under wraps.

Serial murder, even in this city, became a tribal thing, a public airing of primitive emotion. What he feared was the kind
of media circus that had surrounded “Son of Sam.” Even when there was nothing happening in the case, the New York media had
hyped the story for ratings, virtually assuring that the killer would strike again. The papers had generated a kind of mass
hysteria that had fed on itself, affecting everyone’s judgment, including that of the police.

If Carrera and Milne were simply the beginning, if bodies continued to turn up, then sooner or later the most sensational
details would leak. And then no rational explanation of the difficulties involved would suffice to explain a lack of progress.
For the moment at least, he could count on the chief of detectives. But if a scapegoat became necessary, McCauley would not
have the slightest hesitation in cutting him loose. They would prosper together, or Sakura would sink alone.

Not that he had any intention to sink. Pressure from the top was part of the job. He could handle it. What he hated was failure,
and having to face that the odds of his failing were high. His training had prepared him to understand how difficult it was
to solve a case where the victims were chosen at random and the murders motiveless in any ordinary sense. With little physical
evidence and no witnesses, he had almost nothing that could lead him to the killer. The ritual element of these deaths was
the strongest thing he had to go on—a window on the landscape of the killer’s obsession.

This killer’s ritual struck him as something …
personal
was the only word he had for it. But a serial almost never murdered people he knew. His victims were not subjects but faceless
objects to be slotted anonymously into the fantasy that was driving him. The fantasy was what substituted for motive. So it
was the fantasy that he must try to understand. He had to feel his way into the killer’s brain.

His people, meanwhile, were going through the mechanics of canvasses and interviews. They would check out all the religious
cults and hate groups that targeted gays, along with the recent releases from mental institutions. A waste of time and manpower
in his estimation. This killer was a loner, not the member of any group. And too organized to be crazy—at least in a legal
sense.

What he would have to consider was going proactive, especially when they’d worked up a profile. There was no doubt that many
serials monitored their cases in the media and often liked to insinuate themselves into the investigation. The outrage that
was already building in the gay community might be used to construct a trap, a series of police meetings with various interest
groups where the killer might show up. A signature on a petition list might ultimately be cross-linked with other information
that developed.

On the landing below him, a door opened. Footsteps went clambering down the metal stairs. He waited for a moment, then followed
them downward. At the eleventh floor he stopped, passing through the door to the brick-lined hallway that led to the Special
Investigation Division and the controlled chaos that waited inside Major Case. In the squad room he signed out, picking up
the keys to his department car. There was time to check in quickly with his unit before heading out to his appointment at
the university.

Zoe Kahn hailed from an unfortunate section of Queens. A fact that she took no pains to hide. Humble beginnings looked great
when you made it big. And Zoe intended to make it. She owed it to God for the heavy dose of good looks and brains with which
he’d seen fit to endow her. And she was not afraid of hard work. Zoe feared nothing.

A handy trait given her current position as police beat reporter for the
Post.
And her intention to climb. Cable news contributor was the next logical step, and she’d been looking for a story that could
get her an invite to the talking-head circuit. She figured she might have found it.

Two fairly prominent homosexuals murdered in the city in the space of three days, and some sort of psycho ritual performed
on the bodies. Homosexual thrill killings à la Cunanan, or a serial’s opening gambit. Either way it was juicy, though the
serial angle had the better potential long term. Her headline this morning had screamed:
SERIAL KILLER STALKING CITY
’
S GAYS
? The question mark thrown in to cover her ass.

Her cell phone rang, sounding eerily in the basement garage.

“Here,” she spoke into the unit.

“He’s on his way down,” the voice said.

“Thanks.” She flipped the phone closed and nestled back into the shadow of a concrete pillar, going over the moves in her
head, the questions she wanted to ask. Not that she really expected Sakura to give her any real answers at this stage. She’d
been through this dance with him before. A former deputy commissioner’s daughter murdered with plenty of mayhem and sex in
suitably high places—a Special
Homicide Unit case that had made her reputation on the police beat. So in a way, she supposed, she owed Sakura. He had played
the case close but straight. He never lied, or even stretched the truth over-much. He just didn’t tell you a goddamn thing
until he was good and ready.

She knew his reputation with his men. Respected, if not beloved, for a harsh but scrupulous fairness, and a competence that
made everyone around him look good. Her own appraisal was a cold man, but not without his passions. His eyes betrayed him
with an intensity that could burn like dry ice. She’d felt their sting more than once. It was the same look he no doubt used
to intimidate police witnesses into silence with the press, with that spiel of his about obstruction of justice.

The elevator opened, disgorging passengers. She watched Sakura separate from the pack. His figure distinct. Ridiculously tall
for an Asian.

His height always surprised her, as if mentally she’d been trying to cut him down. Truth was, she found him attractive. Something
in that deliciously cruel mouth and the way he never seemed to notice that she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. That
was the hook, the thing that got under her skin. She and Sakura were colleagues of a sort, both with their little tricks of
intimidation. Except that hers never seemed to work on him. She had a fantasy of interviewing him entirely in the nude. See
if he could ignore her obvious attributes then.

“Lieutenant Sakura.” She stepped out in front of him. “The Carrera-Milne murders. Is it your belief we’re dealing with a serial?”

To his credit, his reaction to her presence here was cool. He walked past her, shaking his head, as if her question itself
were foolish. “Your article this morning was premature, Ms. Kahn. We have two deaths. It’s simply your assumption they’re
related.”

“My article stated that the condition of both bodies suggested a ritualized murder of some kind.” She managed to match her
stride to his, despite the confines of her skirt. “Are you denying a ritual aspect to these deaths?”

He had reached his car, and now he stopped and faced her. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information.”

She smiled. “But you’re not denying it’s accurate?”

His key was in his hand. He fitted it in the lock.

“What about the gay community?” she said to his back. “Don’t people have a right to be warned of the danger?”

“I feel certain, Ms. Kahn, that you’ll continue to take care of that.” He had spoken as he opened the door. He climbed in
while she continued to pepper him with questions.