American Devil (36 page)

His small apartment was a stinking hole in a disused schoolhouse. At one time the whole building had been alive with people. But the school had shut down and now the building was in a state of progressive decay. Each day it seemed that more windows were broken and boarded.

Once in his apartment, he had a fixed routine. He used chloroform, which meant you could bathe them without having to restrain them.

He opened the case and the curled body of Lucy James lay inside like a little snail in a shell. Maurice stroked her cheek. She did look different from his previous girls. She looked younger, and clean too. Much more healthy than the others. Maybe she was new to the game. Still, it didn’t matter much to him. She’d be just as nice to take care of and hug up to.

He picked her up and put her on the bed. Lying flat out, she was probably only just five foot three inches tall. A real little ’un, he thought. He liked her, though. He liked her little button nose and her straight shiny hair. Her skin smelled of cream.

He was light as air as he tiptoed into the bathroom to run a bath. He put in some special nice bubbles that he bought from the store and opened his bathroom cabinet. It was stocked with things he thought his girls might like. Anything a girl could want.

He returned to the girl with a bottle of disinfectant and some cotton wool. He dabbed the dried blood from her head. There was an inch-long gash from the cosh, but it would heal real soon.

Then he undressed her, took her denim skirt off, her black pantyhose and black panties. Her jacket came next and a large pink woolly sweater and a T-shirt. No brassiere. That was new, but it was good if she didn’t wear one. Buying brassieres was not easy. The girl lay naked on his bed. Mo looked on, scared by his own trembling excitement.

Maurice took her clothes to his little desk and took out a notebook. He flicked through the pages. He came to the next blank page. He wrote her name real neat. It was Lucy. He liked that, too. Lucy with the button nose. Yes.

He took each item of clothes one at a time and wrote the details in his notebook. The size, the colour and anything else. He just liked to know so that when he went to the department store he could get something right for her. He wanted to keep her for a good long time.

He wrote down:

Now he knew the girl liked different colours and was size small or petite. It felt good to know a little more about her.

The trickle of water from the hot faucet had filled the bath and Maurice lifted the girl into it. He liked the washing and cleaning and looking after. He soaped her all up with a sponge and got her all clean and soft. Then he put her in a nightdress and laid her back on the bed.

The restraints were not strictly necessary as the room had no window and the only door was locked with a single key Maurice kept on a string round his neck. But still, it was best at the start in case they went crazy at you.

He had a really good set of bed restraints straight from a mental hospital that a guy gave him for nothing. The bracelets were leather on the outside and a soft material inside so it didn’t hurt their wrists and ankles. There were four body restraints but he left these untied. She was only a little thing. He couldn’t imagine she’d need them.

When the job was finished, Maurice sat and turned on the TV. He liked TV. He liked to watch it with his girlfriends. It was like being married, sitting there together with the TV on, and it made him feel safe and happy.

He couldn’t wait to go to bed and hug up close to her and smell her hair. He reckoned she might be a stayer if only he could keep her alive. It was hard to keep them alive, just like the rabbits he used to be allowed to keep. Sometimes they just died on you. Maybe it was the cold, maybe they were scared or maybe Mo just wasn’t feeding them right.

 

T
he red display on the bedside clock in Tom’s apartment read 6.14 a.m. A crumpled cotton quilt lay half across his outstretched body. The room smelled of sweat and whisky. In the hour-before-dawn stillness, a sharp knock rang out. Four hard and fast raps on the apartment door.

Harper stirred slowly and listened. Again, he heard four short knocks. He flicked the lamp on. He certainly wasn’t expecting visitors. Whoever it was knocked again. Tom stood up and nearly reeled over on unsteady legs. The room was still coming together out of hazy grey dots. He didn’t like this. Who wanted him at this time of day? Perhaps it was just Eddie with a new story to tell him. He hoped.

In the living room, Harper quietly pulled on his jeans and stared out into the darkness. He could see the light in the hallway under his door. He could see the shadow of two feet. He edged round the room, keeping out of the line of the door, and took up a position low to the floor. The knocking continued. It was a careful, precise knock. He suddenly imagined it was Lisa standing in the corridor and felt his heart hammer in his chest.

‘Who is it?’ he called out.

‘It’s me,’ replied the voice quietly. It was Denise. Harper felt his anxiety begin to recede. He’d left Denise hours earlier. Plenty of time to get drunk. He remembered slow-dancing long into the early hours. He pulled on a T-shirt and opened the door.

She stood there in a long black coat. It had snowed again on her way over. Her hair was wet and she was holding a black and red notebook.

‘Denise.’

‘You can’t give up on this one, Tom. Not just yet. Not now. Listen, I went through my notes. I’ve been working on the profile. I know you say you’re not working the case, but we can still help. We’ve already done some good work, but there are some errors and our analysis doesn’t go far enough.’

‘Denise.’

‘If we use my earlier profile, we’re looking for a married salesman with a high school education. Too many people. We need to be more precise. Until we’re precise, no one’s going to recognize this guy.’

‘Denise,’ he said for the third time.

‘I know who I am, Tom. Now put some coffee on, we’ve got work to do here. You and I could get somewhere on this one. We can pass our profile to Blue Team and see if it helps. Then we leave it, all right? We can call it quits and walk away. But we’ve got to give them what we know.’

Harper smiled. She was sure determined and he liked it. And what’s more, she was right. He went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. He stood at the door and watched as she took off her coat. It sparkled with melting snowflakes.

He put the coffee on the table and she sat down. ‘I’ve been up all night, but we’re going to have to go through this line by line. I want a perfect picture of the killer. By the time we finish, we need to be able to determine where he buys his socks. You ready?’

‘I’m ready,’ Harper said. He had a sceptical smile on his face but Denise was more than ready for his attitude.

She opened her notebook. ‘My profile was all right, but it’s general. I’ve tried to add some specifics. Let’s see what you think.’

Tom nodded.

‘To begin with,’ she said, ‘we’re dealing with an SSSK: a sexually sadistic serial killer. That tells us one important thing - SSSKs don’t stop until they’re caught or killed. The ultimate fantasy for the SSSK is control. The collection of trophies is an example of possession and the expression of the fantasy. The taking of the body parts indicates a need to possess the dead as well as the living. The killer needs trophies because he does not feel adequate with women. And we’ll see this in his work and home life.’

Tom sat down next to her. She was a scientist, but she was homing in on the kind of person the killer might appear to be from the perspective of his wife or colleagues. It was promising.

‘These are my profile notes,’ said Denise, and handed him her notebook. Tom flicked over the pages.

‘He’s a man with two sides, a kind considerate man who has violent mood swings. He might even hit his wife, but be overly sentimental with children. He has a fixation with being loved because it’s the only way to fulfil his needs, but he will not be sexually active with his wife.’

Tom smiled. ‘You’re describing Average Joe, Denise. He’s a good guy who sometimes gets angry, he loves his wife but loses his temper, and they’ve lost touch with each other.’

‘It’s not Average Joe,’ said Denise. ‘Listen carefully. His mood swings are violent. He will be sentimental with his wife at times and then get angry. He will enjoy hurting her. Enjoy it because it allows him to control how she thinks and feels. That’s what he wants. He wants to own the narrative. He sees himself as a martyr who loves too much, too intensely, who is not loved enough in return. The unusual feature of this case is that he’s gone for sophisticated victim types - maybe prostitutes as well, but we’ll leave that for now. These high society girls are the unobtainable angels. Either this is because he’s got this whore/ Madonna thing going on or it’s something practical. My thinking is that he indulges himself with these girls to prove he’s not the loser he inwardly knows he is. He’s living out some fantasy life in which he is a part of these women’s lives. If Lottie Bixley is his, then it indicates that there is a strong need to feed the impulse to kill. He might have two modes - an organized mode and a disorganized mode. I’ve never seen that in the same killer before.’

‘Or he’s just trying to fuck with the profilers,’ said Tom, sipping coffee.

‘It’s not out of the question after what he did to set up Winston Carlisle. Or it could be more banal than that. If I’m right about Lottie Bixley, then he also had access to a house for four days in November when the family were away. He might have been alone at home and needed someone quick - so he took a hooker.’

Harper nodded. ‘The Lottie connection is very slight, but you might have something, Denise, so go on.’

‘Okay. He drives a car, possibly a blue car. He’s in his late thirties or early forties and is clean shaven with dark or greying hair. He has an interest in poetry and art, again because it makes him feel like less of a loser. He likes going to museums like the Frick and MoMA. They make him feel intelligent and sophisticated. He lives somewhere off the Triborough Bridge, possibly in the North Queens area, and works in and around North Manhattan, but he’s on the move. That’s why he’s less worried about being identified. I think he sees lots of different people all the time. He owns a garage or workshop of some sort and is often away from home for extended periods in the evening. He needs to be in East Harlem and on Ward’s Island more frequently than other locations. There’s a reason for that. I don’t know what it is, but it needs looking at. He buys expensive fashion gifts for his wife. Shoes, scarves, jewellery. She will not know where these items come from. His childhood was somewhere rural, but he will rarely speak about it. He also has a problem with the police. He wants to prove himself better than all of you, so I would suggest that at some point he will likely have applied for the police department, either in New York or elsewhere. He will have been rejected at the psychological assessment. He will sometimes come home in different clothes from the ones he was wearing in the morning. He may leave items of women’s jewellery or underwear in his car. In the last month his strange behaviour will have escalated rapidly. His family will have noticed his preoccupation. He will clean his car thoroughly at the weekend. He will vacuum the boot of the car and shampoo the interior. His shoes will sometimes have mud on them. There may be small scratches on his face, neck or hands. He may come home with a smell of unfamiliar perfume. He will have dirt under his fingernails. He has hunted and skinned and gutted animals before, so he’s not afraid of cutting. My guess, Tom, is that his wife will know who he is. She must know.’

Harper listened intently. Denise was wired. This was far beyond anything she’d done before. And it was compelling. ‘Where did it all come from, Denise?’

‘It takes a while to come together. It’s all based on evidence. Your evidence. All the stuff that came back from each team. I just painted a picture - the kind of picture that his wife would see. You were wrong about my interests, Tom. I don’t care about his psychology, I care that he gets caught. This might help. What do you think?’

‘It’s very good.’

‘Even though it’s written by a civilian?’

‘Even so. It reads good. Shit, Denise, it’s very good. You’ve brought him to life.’

‘You’re not going to call this a load of psychobabble?’

‘Not this time.’

‘You think they’ll use it?’

‘I guess that they will.’

‘So,’ said Denise, ‘do we know where he buy his socks?’

Tom looked at her. ‘Yeah, we know. He doesn’t buy them - his wife does.’

 

S
traight after they agreed all aspects of the profile, Denise and Tom left his apartment and continued their conversation over breakfast in a coffee house for another couple of hours. By the end of that time Tom was convinced he should do something with Denise’s profile.

He called Eddie Kasper. He couldn’t meet him at the station house, so they agreed to meet on the steps of the Met, a short walk from Harper’s apartment and a shorter walk to the murder sites on the Upper East Side.

When Denise and Harper arrived at the elegant steps leading up to the stone façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art they stood for a moment and looked at each other in the winter sunlight. Tom was preoccupied. He felt guilty about his late night dance, the subsequent kissing. It was supposed to show him he was over Lisa, but it had just brought her back to life. He still felt connected. He needed to get out of the deep tracks in his own mind and there was only one way he knew - Denise Levene’s way: an elastic band. He snapped it hard against his wrist and looked up at the cool grey façade of the museum. A text message interrupted him.