American Devil (19 page)

The killer’s jaw was wide open. He looked left and right to see if anyone else was shocked and confused. He wasn’t anything like the portrait they’d painted. They were fucking idiots. They were the fucking incompetents. He had not left evidence and his victims had all been wide awake. The killer downed his shot and ordered another. The indignant anger was rising in his chest. He had to put this right. He had to make sure people knew what he was really like. He felt a pulse throb in his temples. He looked into the mirror behind the bottles on the bar. He was handsome, wasn’t he? Not a snivelling incompetent. He was the American Devil. And he was strong and capable. He tried to calm himself but for some reason it wouldn’t stop circling in his mind. He was offended. He was also curious about the evidence left in Jessica’s apartment and how they knew what’d happened with Mary-Jane. He licked his lips. Maybe Williamson knew too much. He wanted to know. He wanted to know right now. He drank another shot and started to think.

At seven his next girl, Elizabeth, entered the bar. He knew she would: he had access to her electronic diary. She was meeting Kyra, a colleague and fellow intern. He stared at her. She was more beautiful in the flesh than in the photographs he kept of her. He’d come across her by chance at a city function three years earlier. She’d been standing by her old man, smiling and playing the pure, dutiful, all-American daughter. He’d liked her then. He liked her more now. But she’d not stayed pure, that was the problem, and now he had to act. She needed to be snuffed out. They all did.

He went up to the bar and stood next to Elizabeth. He ordered a Black Russian and turned to her. ‘Can I get you something?’

She smiled and shook her head. Polite but firm. He tried again.

‘You had a tough day?’

‘I’m just waiting for my friend. Thanks.’

He nodded as the barman put his drink in front of him, not taking his eyes from Elizabeth. She didn’t dare look up, but she knew he was staring.

‘Listen,’ he continued, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just a little nervous. I have to admit, I’ve seen you before. Your father’s the TV preacher, right? A real puritan. Just what this country needs.’

At the realization that he might be genuine, her lifelong training in good manners kicked in.

‘Hey, sorry, I just . . . I hope you didn’t think I was being rude.’

‘No, it must be hard - you walk into a bar and want a bit of peace and some asshole hits on you.’

‘It can be,’ she said and smiled sweetly.

His eye was watching her little silver crucifix oscillate in the beautiful dip of her neckline.

‘You wouldn’t mind . . . I mean, I know it’s odd, but you wouldn’t mind sharing a beer with an admirer?’

‘Of me or my dad?’ she said.

‘A little bit of both, maybe,’ he said and smiled broadly.

She was flattered. She couldn’t help it. ‘Maybe one beer until my friend arrives,’ she said.

He called the barman. ‘Can you get this woman a cool one?’ He smiled at her. It was a great smile, and she felt a little frisson of something in her stomach.

‘What do you do?’ she asked.

‘Me? I work in art. I buy and sell paintings.’ The man laughed. ‘Nothing as beautiful as you, though.’

Elizabeth smiled. ‘Please. You can cut the corny lines.’

The man in the black suit watched her take her beer and sip the white foam off the top. He leaned in slightly to catch her perfume. ‘You know which painting you remind me of? Manet’s
Olympia
.’

‘I don’t know it,’ she said.

‘Well, maybe I’ll show you sometime. But it’s in Paris. Or perhaps you wouldn’t mind a European adventure? The thing with Manet’s painting is that it’s a nude of a prostitute. It offended the public taste. I sometimes do that myself, you know, offend the public taste. All great artists do.’

She smiled.
This guy was a little too intense.
‘You’re a great artist?’

‘I do a little sculpture,’ he said. ‘I’ve not been discovered yet. But who knows.’

She smiled again. He was just drinking her in, letting his imagination run away with him. He was starting to feel slightly delirious. He needed to get away from her. It was not the right time. More than that, her friend would be in soon and that would be the end of the chase. He had to keep the lines clean. No residues. He finished his drink and thanked her, leaning in and kissing her cheek. As he did so, his hand passed quickly into her handbag. He left quickly.

He would’ve liked it to rain now. He looked up to the autumn sky. It looked good for a shower.

And now he had her entrance card, he could begin his plan. She’d change her entrance card soon, sure, but would soon be soon enough? He didn’t think so - she was girl number five and tonight was her night.

She just didn’t know it yet.

 

D
own at Blue Team, the day turned into evening and everyone was waiting. Williamson had got the team to set up the big blue boards in the basement room. They had three photographs each of Mary-Jane, Grace Frazer and Amy Lloyd-Gardner, and now Jessica Pascal’s face stared out innocently alongside the others. Williamson wanted no mistakes. He wanted to hurt this guy.

Tom Harper and Eddie Kasper walked into the basement. The other detectives of Blue Team were all sitting around facing Nate Williamson, who was talking to them in low tones.

They’d been talking about the lead detective’s performance live on air. Everyone agreed that he’d done a good job. Williamson wasn’t happy with it, but that was his character. He was at least pleased that he’d fronted it. He’d insisted, he told his guys, even though Harper had offered to do it himself.

The team went quiet as Harper approached. Everyone was hoping this would work, but they all knew it was a hell of a long shot. Harper was looking tired and sat on the desk at the front. He nodded to the guys and wiped his nose with his forefinger. ‘That was a great job out there, Nate. If he’s listening, then that’s gotta sting.’

‘Yeah, well, I did what I said I would. Let’s just hope it pays off - administration want every report on these murders to go in triplicate right up to the deputy commissioner, so if this fucks up, then everyone in the fucking city knows it. How about that?’

‘High stakes,’ said Harper, ‘but I hope it pays off for you.’

‘He can only do two things, call or not call. That’s evens. This is a good bet. I’d back it myself, but I’m saving up for retirement.’

Harper felt a smile cross his lips. It was good to hear someone being less than cynical, a rare thing at Homicide.

Williamson moved off to the coffee pot at the back of the basement room, then came back with a steaming cup. He turned to the rest of Blue Team. ‘Let’s focus on our killer. How we doing out there?’

‘Still nothing on ViCAP,’ said Kasper. ‘I’ve been trying to get the FBI profile coordinator to give us something concrete, but they’re still reluctant to make a judgement.’

Lol Edwards chimed in from the soft seats at the back of the room. ‘My view, for what it’s worth, is that he’s from out of state.’

‘Opinions are fine, Lol, but we need evidence. Nothing else? What’s the autopsy report looking like, Garcia?’

‘Everyone’s got a copy. Details worthy of note are as follows: the cause of death in the case of Jessica Pascal was asphyxiation. Plastic bag was found at the scene. The wounds mostly occurred before death. The victim had recently had sexual intercourse. Traces of semen on the body. Impossible to tell whether it was rape or they had sex and then the killer went ape. Get this - there were sixty-four separate shallow knife wounds.’

Lol Edwards sniffed for attention. ‘ME called, she overlooked a bite mark on the left buttock. Pretty deep, too. We’ve got another teeth print. It’s the same mouth. And the lip print matches as much as they can tell.’

‘How did he get in?’

‘We’ve got sightings of Jessica in Joe’s Bar with a grey-haired man in his late thirties. We’ve also got an ID of the same guy at the girl’s Baptist church. We’re working them into sketches.’

‘What do you say, Tom? What are we looking at?’ said Eddie.

‘Well, don’t let the fake profile fool you. This is an aggressive sexual predator. Organized and ruthless. He enjoys hurting and humiliating. There’s a religious element that I don’t understand yet but he already likes to communicate. He left quotations with Amy and Jessica. The quotations are both poets, Rilke and John Milton. I’ve been up to Columbia University so we’ve got a little background. They were both visionary poets. Milton was also blind. Rilke was a radical. God knows what he’s getting at.’

‘Maybe he just likes poetry,’ said Eddie. ‘You know, hobbies - walking, poetry, serial killing.’

The guys laughed as Williamson edged away from the circle with his coffee and turned to Rick Swanson. ‘How about the progress on Amy, our angel?’

‘We got a hit on the nail art. There’s a salon up in Harlem. Quite a low rent affair, not the kind of place a banker’s wife would be in, except, in nail art circles, it’s got Harlem kudos. Anyway, they claim the designs are theirs, but they don’t recognize her photo. So we’re still digging. They say that sometimes these high society girls get their maids to come in for designs, get a one-off and then repeat them themselves in their more upmarket beauticians.’

‘So, what we can conclude is that we got nothing,’ said Mark Garcia. ‘You want me to do the press release? A guy goes out on a date with a church-going virgin, doesn’t get his way so he kills the poor kid.’

‘Garcia, fucking button it,’ said Eddie.

‘Fuck you! That’s all we got.’

The captain had entered the room during their intense conversation. No one had noticed him, but he was watching them all closely. He had some news.

‘Williamson, we had a caller wanting to speak to you.’ The room stopped dead.

Williamson stood up. ‘Was it our guy?’

‘He said he’s got a handful of cherry blossom that he wants to shove up your ass.’

There was a murmur of laughter throughout the room but the captain wasn’t smiling at all. The room went still for a moment.

‘He hung up real quick,’ said Lafayette. ‘He said he was busy, but he’d call back when he had a moment.’

‘Was it him?’ said Harper.

‘He said he’d cut Jessica sixty-four times. He said the career girl murderer only managed sixty-three. He wanted to see if he could go one better.’

‘No one knew that detail,’ said Harper. ‘It’s got to be him.’

 

T
he detectives from Blue Team were all crushed into the small interview room and had been ever since the news of the first call. At 10.55 p.m., the phone rang again. Williamson signalled through the big glass window into the observation room which was set up with the technical team. They patched through the call and started the trace.

‘Hello, this is Detective Williamson, lead detective on the American Devil murder case. How can I help?’

There was a crackle and a pause on the line. The seven police officers in the room all held their breath.

‘Hello? This is Detective Williamson. Are you the man we want to speak to? You want to talk about your mistakes? You want to know how we know all about you?’

Again there was silence. Williamson looked up at the window and shrugged. The technical guys rolled their fingers. Whoever it was, he was still on the line and Williamson needed to keep talking.

The silence from the other end continued. Williamson started up again. ‘If you want to keep me talking, let me know you’re not just another timewaster. I get a hundred calls a days claiming to be this guy and every one is a fake. So give me something or get back into your hole and stop wasting police time.’

The men waited. Taking a harsh position could go either way. Harper glanced at the clock. A minute had elapsed. It was good, but they hadn’t traced the call so Harper presumed it was a cell phone, probably unregistered. The only hope of getting anything was by triangulating the call. The technical guys had set it all up. They just needed to get the signal of the cell phone transmitter received by two or three base stations, then they could work out the location based on the time difference from each station. But it needed more time than tracing a traditional phone and it was fallible.

Keep going
, mouthed Harper.

‘Okay, Mr Silent, let’s get one or two things straight: this is my investigation.’

‘Shut . . . the . . . fuck . . . up.’ Bingo. The killer had replied. The first time they’d heard the voice. It was deep, slow and considered. A frightening voice. A voice you didn’t want to find in your apartment after dark.

‘You’re talking to me, then,’ said Williamson.