Kill Me Once (34 page)

The weather outside was very cold. At exactly eight o’clock he dressed in his heavy black clothes, causing his forehead to break out into a profuse sweat. After placing the gun in the side pocket of his coat, he stepped out into the chill night air.

The white Pontiac Sunfire had been stolen from a used-car lot in Strongsville. It would be days before its disappearance was noticed. Tonight he would abandon it in an east-side ghetto and steal another vehicle for his getaway.

Nathan knew the streets around Cleveland very well. They were
his
streets. A left turn onto Wooster was followed by a right onto Center Ridge. Half a mile later he pulled into the crowded parking lot of the Westgate Shopping Mall in Rocky River, Ohio.

This was where he would find them: the keys to finally recreating the Son of Sam’s deliciously heinous crime.

He parked neither extremely close to nor extremely far from the mall’s entrance. From this vantage point he had an excellent view of the happy Christmas shoppers milling about and bleating at each other like a flock of mindless sheep as they blithely went about the pitiful routines of their pathetic little lives.

Nathan shook his head in disgust, irritated at the inconsistencies in the script. The original Son of Sam had committed his murders in the sweltering heat of the summer of 1977 – back in the days when the chicks had been a hell of a lot tougher – but sometimes you just had to adapt to survive.

Still, very much like David Berkowitz – ‘The Wicked King Wicker’ – Nathan desperately wished that he could kill them all. And slowly, at that.

But he knew better than to stray further from the script at this late stage of the game, so he simply turned off the car’s engine, logged onto his MacBook Pro and waited in total silence for his prey.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Despite his earlier promise of getting up to Cleveland in a couple of hours, Bill Krugman didn’t land at Hopkins until nearly eight p.m. that night. He hustled down the steps of the DOJ’s Gulfstream V and met Dana and Brown on the tarmac.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I got caught up in a debriefing session with the President. He’s really breathing down my neck on this one. I talked to some of the others. I even went over to Crawford’s house – no show. He’s not answering his phone. Looks like you could be right, Dana. Anyway, I’ve got an APB out for him with the local police and all the Ohio field offices. We need to resolve this
fast
. My job is on the line with this one.
All
our jobs are.’

Dana nodded as the cold winter wind howled across the tarmac. For a moment she wondered if something might have happened to Crawford, but his tumour suddenly didn’t seem relevant any more. He had betrayed her.

She doubted they’d ever find him. He’d obviously planned these copycat murders for years, and nobody in the world knew more about FBI search procedures than him. Hell, he’d literally written the goddamn
handbook
on the subject.

‘So where do we go from here?’ Dana asked.

Krugman glanced down at his watch. ‘We’ll start at daybreak,’ he said. ‘Right now we all need to go and get rested up. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.’

Dana frowned. ‘Can’t we start now?’ she asked. ‘Can’t we just—’

Krugman cut her off before she could continue. ‘Wasn’t a request, Special Agent Whitestone. This isn’t your case any more. It’s mine. If you’ve got a problem with that, let me know now.’

Dana shook her head and dropped her gaze to the tarmac. ‘No, sir, that’s fine. I’ll see you in the morning.’

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Fifteen miles west of Hopkins International Airport, Marcia Reynolds and her best friend Amy Wohlers were sitting together in the food court at the Westgate Shopping Mall munching on cinnamon sticky buns.

‘That’s a totally cool purse you got at the Gap,’ Marcia said. ‘Your mom’s totally gonna freak out when she opens it. Seriously, Aim, she’s gonna love it.’

From their stylish clothes to their carefully plucked eyebrows, the girls were mirror images of each other. Both of them were tall and thin, and both had a coltish pubescent beauty. Each wore long auburn hair dyed at the same salon to make them look even
more
alike than nature had intended. They got a kick out of it when people asked them if they were sisters, always replying that they were fraternal twins.

‘You really think so?’ Amy asked. She removed the sleek black handbag from the shopping bag and inspected it again. ‘I don’t know. You don’t think it’s, like, too
young
for her, do you? She’s already thirty-nine, you know.’

‘No way,’ Marcia assured her. ‘Besides, that’s totally the style now. Everybody’s going for the young look these days. It started, like, out in California or something, and now it’s here. Trust me, Aim, she’s gonna die when she sees it. It’s totally rad.’

Amy felt better about the purchase immediately. Of everyone she knew nobody had better fashion sense than Marcia. She could trust her, knew her best friend wouldn’t steer her wrong. If Marcia said the purse was cool, then the purse was cool. End of subject.

The girls were both seventeen now, juniors at Magnificat High School and co-captains of the school’s cheerleading squad. Though the school was an all-girls institution – or perhaps
because
of that fact – they were even more boy-crazy than their co-educational-school counterparts, finding nothing more enjoyable than dolling themselves up for a night of hunk-hunting at the mall, a ritual they’d performed at least twice a week since the sixth grade.

A young man wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a tight white T-shirt that showcased the hard muscles in his upper arms strutted past their table.

‘Whoa!’ Marcia said when he’d passed. ‘Did you get a load of that? Total hottie, but totally conceited too.’

‘Definitely an asshole,’ Amy agreed. ‘I’ll take that sales guy from the Gap any day.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘I swear to God, Marcia. I’ve probably spent a thousand bucks in there over the past three months and he still hasn’t even looked at me twice yet.’

‘He will, Aim,’ Marcia soothed. ‘He totally wants you, I know he does.’

‘Well, then I wish somebody would tell
him
that. Shit, I’m gonna be, like, twenty, before he even asks me out at this rate.’

Just then, Marcia’s BlackBerry beeped in her purse. She held up a finger to Amy and motioned for her to wait. ‘Hold on a minute, Aim. Incoming message.’

She dug out the device and rolled her eyes at the message blinking on the screen.

HEY BABY, WANNA FUCK?

Marcia quickly pecked out her response.

GO FUCK
YOURSELF
, ASSHOLE!

‘What the fuck was that all about?’ Amy asked as Marcia shoved the BlackBerry back into her purse.

‘Nothing – just some perv from the dating site asking me if I wanted to get it on.’

Amy screwed up her pretty face in irritation. ‘What is it with all these jackwads online? I get that kind of shit all the time.’

‘Who knows, and who cares? They probably just get off on it.’

Amy smiled across the table at her best friend. ‘Come on, bitch, tell the truth. You know you get off on it too.’

Marcia Reynolds’s perfectly lipsticked mouth dropped wide open in the kind of shocked and disbelieving look that could only be pulled off with any measure of credibility by a teenaged girl. ‘Fuck you, you fucking slut!
You’re
the fucking perv!’

They both laughed until they cried.

Fixing their make-up and finishing off their cinnamon buns a moment later, they stuffed the wrappers into an overflowing trash receptacle and decided to take a final stroll through the mall before they had to leave. Amy had a strict curfew of nine o’clock, and it was going on eight-thirty already.

‘Come on,’ Marcia said, slipping her arm through Amy’s. ‘Let’s walk past the Gap one more time before we go. You keep looking straight ahead when we get there and I’ll look back to see if he checks you out.’

They made their way past Radio Shack, Bath & Body Works and Waldenbooks before passing the clothing store where the object of Amy’s affection was busily folding sweaters on a display table.

‘Oh my God!’ Marcia squealed, grabbing Amy by the elbow and hustling her forward. ‘He totally checked you out, Aim! He was, like,
undressing
you with his eyes!’
‘

‘Shut up!’

‘I’m dead fucking serious. I
told
you he wants you. Next time we go in there you
have
to talk to him.’

‘You really think so?’

‘I
know
so. But when he’s, like, your boyfriend and shit, you’d better not be dissin’ me to hang out with him all the goddamn time.’

Amy Wohlers laughed happily. ‘Well, maybe he’s got a hot friend or something. That way we could all double date.’

The girls discussed their game plan to hook Amy up with the hottie from the Gap as they walked out of the mall and into the crowded parking lot. Marcia had been given a red Ford Mustang convertible for her sixteenth birthday, and they got inside the car. Eminem’s ‘Crack A Bottle’ blasted from the cranked-up stereo system as they drove.

‘I think Eminem’s totally hot,’ Marcia shouted over the deafening music. ‘I’d fuck him any day.’

Amy rolled her eyes. Both girls were still virgins, so it was funny to hear Marcia talk like she was so sophisticated when it came to sex. ‘You’re way too good for him, Mar,’ she shouted back. ‘He’s a woman-hater. Don’t you hear all that shit he says about Kim in his lyrics? And he hates gays, too, you know.’

Marcia considered this for a moment before snapping her gum and shrugging her shoulders. ‘Well, he’s totally hot and he’s totally rich. Besides, I’m not Kim and I’m not gay, so I’d fuck him anyway.’

Amy paused, then burst out laughing. ‘I would, too. That dude is totally fucking hot!’

They were still giggling as they drove past the post office and pulled up to the kerb in front of Amy’s house on Jamestown Avenue a few minutes later.

Marcia downshifted to park and turned the music down before turning in her seat to face her best friend. ‘What are you wearing tomorrow?’

‘I think I’m gonna wear those new jeans and that black sweater I bought last week.’

‘Going goth on me now?’

‘Nah, just going for the mysterious look.’

‘Good – I’ll wear black too, then.’

Amy opened the passenger door and stepped out. She leaned back in and grabbed her purse from the floorboard. ‘Call me as soon as you get home, OK? I want to make sure you’re safe.’

As she leaned her reed-thin body back out of the car, the first slug caught Amy Wohlers just above her left ear, spraying her brains all over the Mustang’s passenger-side window. The second bullet ripped through her throat before slamming into the dashboard.

The second girl was too stunned to scream. The headlights briefly illuminated the terrifying figure that Nathan cut in his black clothing as he calmly walked around the car to the driver’s side.

‘Good evening,’ he said, though he knew she couldn’t possibly hear him through the rolled-up window. ‘And good night to you, as well.’

Adjusting the white convenience-store bag over the .44-calibre handgun –
a condom
, David Berkowitz had called it – he lifted his arm and pulled the trigger twice.

The first bullet shattered the glass before entering Marcia Reynolds’s heart and killing her instantly.

The second shot penetrated her skull dead centre between her expertly shaped brown eyebrows.

Nathan dropped his hand to his side and quickly walked away, disappearing into the night.
Four down, one to go
.

And then things would
really
start to get interesting.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

The ringing of the telephone on Dana’s bedside table woke her early the next morning. It was Jeremy Brown.

‘I sent a cruiser over to your apartment with a copy of the
Chicago Sun-Times
about an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Should be outside your door now. Give it a read and we’ll see you over here in an hour or so.’

Dana hung up and dragged herself out of bed. She left the bedroom and walked though the living room before opening the front door. The newspaper was lying on her welcome mat.

She picked it up and sat down at the kitchen table before reading the six-column forty-point headline stripped across the top of the front page.

SERIAL KILLER LINK IN LOYOLA MURDERS?

By Chelsea Garret

Sun-Times
Staff Writer

CHICAGO – On Nov. 23, a night janitor discovered the murdered bodies of three female nursing students in a dormitory room at Loyola University.

The victims, Lindsey McCormick, 22, of Seattle; Liza Alloway, 22, of Deer Trail, Wyo.; and Ahn Howser, 19, of San Diego, were all strangled. Each also had her throat cut.

According to police reports, all the fingers on Alloway’s right hand had been chopped off. An autopsy later revealed she also had four broken ribs.

Chicago Police apprehended a suspect on the night of the murders, but later released him when Special Agent Dana Whitestone of the FBI was flown in to investigate.

For the past week, Whitestone, working again with renowned FBI profiler and former partner Crawford Bell, has been investigating the highly publicised ‘Night Stalker’ murder of Mary Ellen Orton in Los Angeles and the ‘BTK’ killings of the Aiken family in Wichita, Kan. Previously, Whitestone had been assigned to the ‘Cleveland Slasher’ case, in which five little girls were brutally murdered over the course of three months.

Late last night, an envelope containing a bloody swatch of clothing arrived at the downtown offices of the
Chicago Sun-Times
. An anonymous police source confirmed the swatch is from a sweatshirt worn by McCormick on the night of the murders.