The Caller (7 page)

The day they moved in, Joe saw that the nice cream sofa had been swapped for a stained orange one and instead of the wrought-iron bed, there was a beige base and mattress from a discount furniture store. The only blessing was that Anna had arrived at the house after an eight-hour flight from Paris. She glanced around, got the vague sense of somewhere clean and tidy, then went upstairs, exhausted enough to sleep on the cheap bed. Shaun had been coached by Joe to create enthusiasm and distraction and it had worked – at least until Anna got up the next day. The problem was that short of rewiring, replumbing and calling in a carpenter, the place was doomed to appear unfinished, however freshly painted the
walls were. Everything wooden was a series of misjudged measurements: baseboards that were too long or too short, doors that were too narrow, cabinets that wouldn’t close. Some of the doors had been hung with just two screws in each hinge. The bedroom doorframe had come off in Joe’s hand. Upstairs, by the bathroom door, light shone through from the recessed lighting in the kitchen.

Anna had taken it well. She was so touched by the effort Joe had made, she hadn’t made a fuss. But over the months that followed, Joe would hear random shouts from around the house when things broke or handles came off or heads were banged against surprise corners.

‘It’s only me,’ said Joe, always reassuring her every time he came home. ‘Hey,’ he said, kissing her on the lips. ‘How you doing? You look cute.’ Anna was small, with sallow skin and pale green eyes. She was barefoot and dressed in jeans and a black tank. She shrugged. ‘I’m OK.’ She ran her hand over the back of her hair, trying to flatten the tangles.

‘Did you call Chloe in the end?’ he said.

‘You are not going to believe my luck,’ she said.

‘Luck?’

‘Yes. The photographer from yesterday has a new girlfriend, who is, maybe, twenty-two. Anyway, she styled the whole thing. He offered her as a solution to Chloe, which she had to accept,
because she had inconvenienced him. And I’m not fired.’

‘You are kidding me.’

‘You thought I’d be fired?’ She smiled.

‘No. But Chloe is …’

‘I know. But she’s schizophrenic. We’ve agreed she pushed me into the shoot, so for now I can just stay working from home.’

‘That’s … wonderful.’

‘I know.’

‘Honey,’ said Joe. ‘I just want you to know … I love you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I love you too.’

‘And I feel …’

‘You feel?’

‘Just …’ He shrugged. ‘I guess I feel …’

They could hear keys in the front door and voices in the hallway.

‘He’s back early,’ said Anna, leaning out towards the sound.

Shaun walked into the kitchen, throwing his book bag on the floor.

‘Mom, Dad, this is Tara.’

It almost killed Joe not to flash a look at Anna. Tara was about seventeen, blonde, five foot nine, painfully thin and in very low cut jeans and a skinny yellow T-shirt. An oversized pink bag hung on her forearm.

‘Hey,’ said Tara. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘You too,’ said Joe.

‘Yes,’ Anna managed.

‘I’d shake hands but I, like, just got these,’ said Tara, wiggling her fingers and a new set of sparkling acrylic nails.

‘They’re very pretty,’ said Anna.

‘
I
thought so,’ said Tara. ‘My dad is, like, having a pool party tonight. I live with my dad. So I
so
had to do something outrageous. There’s some, like, TV guy friend of his coming. And that’s what I want to do – TV. So we were, like, in the city earlier.’ Every statement sounded like a question. She smiled at Shaun. ‘We were bikini shopping.’

Shaun tried to smile back. ‘I got some CDs.’

‘Did you find anything, Tara?’ said Anna.

‘I did,’ she said, swinging a miniature paper bag from its white rope handles. She started by pulling out a red string that turned into a bikini top, then dug in again and pulled out a small pair of red hipster shorts.

‘Wow,’ said Anna.

‘Yeah,’ said Joe, turning quickly towards the fridge.

‘Oh and check this out,’ said Tara, rubbing a hand up her tanned arm. ‘This is this new fake stuff? Instant but waterproof. SplashBronze. You should try it.’

‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Anna.

‘We’re going to my room,’ said Shaun.

‘OK, bye,’ said Tara, with a little wave.

‘Would you like to stay for supper?’ said Anna.

Tara glanced at the cubed beef. ‘Ew, no thank you!’ she said. ‘I mean, you know, I don’t do red meat. Just white. Or fish. Some fish. Red Snapper and stuff that doesn’t taste very fishy.’ She shrugged and followed Shaun into the hallway, about to slip her hand into his jeans’ pocket until she remembered her new nails.

Joe walked back to Anna, drinking from a carton of juice.

‘What do you, like, think and stuff?’ said Joe.

Anna shook her head, smiling. ‘Hooker.’

‘How do you really feel?’

She shrugged. ‘What can I say?’

‘Yeah, I know. It’s weird. He looks so unhappy and it’s like she doesn’t even notice.’

‘Or care.’

‘Hey, she could be a hooker with a heart.’

Anna laughed. ‘I want him to be happy again. His poor sad eyes.’ She shook her head. ‘To her, he’s just this handsome—’

‘Poor kid.’

Anna laughed. ‘She’s going to try that bikini on for him up there.’

‘Want me to go break it up?’

Anna laughed as he grabbed her from behind and kissed her cheek.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘she’s not my type.’

‘She’s not Shaun’s type either.’

‘Teenage boys don’t have types. That’s their mothers’ job.’

‘I would never expect him to go for anyone I’d like.’

They both went quiet, thinking of Shaun’s girlfriend Katie. She was a girl the whole family had fallen in love with.

Joe and Danny sat in the hot, cramped back room of the post office where the letter had been mailed. A small television screen ran black and white video footage of the mailboxes inside the building. An over-excited manager hovered around behind them.

After a quarter of an hour, Joe turned around to him.

‘Hey … Simon, if you want to leave us here doing our thing, we’ll call you if we see anything we need your help with.’

‘Sure,’ said Simon. ‘Absolutely. No problem. I’ll be right outside.’

‘Yeah, thanks,’ said Danny.

‘God bless him,’ said Joe.

‘I fucking hate this shit,’ said Danny pointing to the screen. ‘I have nightmares about video tapes. Watching the same thing over and over and over until I lose my mind, I’m in a fucking straitjacket.’

They watched in silence for ten minutes.

‘We’re looking for someone mailing a single small envelope between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. OK – here’s one guy,’ said Joe. ‘Let’s still that. Go bring Simon back.’

Simon rushed in ahead of Danny. ‘You got something?’

‘Do you know this guy?’ said Joe.

Simon put his face within three inches of the screen, then shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sorry. No. Do you want me to bring any of the others in?’

‘Yeah, that would be great,’ said Joe.

No-one recognized the man. Or the nine other men and five women who mailed letters around the same time. Danny wrote down all the relevant frames on the footage and they took the tape with them. TARU – the Technical Assistance Response Unit – had sent equipment to Manhattan North, so they could transfer the tape to DVD and print stills when they got back to the office.

‘OK,’ said Danny. ‘We still doing Chelsea?’

‘Yup.’

Dawg On It Pet Accessories was a long, skinny building between a closed tapas bar and a men’s T-shirt store on Eighth Avenue.

‘We’re too early,’ said Danny, pointing at the poodle-shaped hours of business sign and wandering into the T-shirt store instead. Joe followed him in. It was small and crammed with free-standing circular
rails, wall-mounted rails and shelves of T-shirts. A hanging metal rack behind the counter was stuffed full of greetings cards. A three-foot long CD rack filled with hundreds of CDs behind glass was mounted like a shelf behind the counter with a sticker that said, In Emergency Break Glass. Resting on top, was an iPod hi-fi.

Danny pushed hard through the rails on the wall and pulled out a navy T-shirt.

‘Kind of cool,’ he said to Joe. ‘I need something for the weekend.’

He went to the counter and took out his wallet.

‘I’m going out on a limb here,’ said the guy behind the counter. ‘But would I be right in saying you two are not, like, together?’

‘That would be right,’ said Joe.

‘And you never would be.’

‘He’s not my type,’ said Danny.

‘Well, you need to look a little closer at the graphic on that T-shirt,’ he said to Danny. ‘Because you might not be sending out the message you want to.’

‘Oh,’ said Danny. ‘That’s not what I thought it was. You’re right. Thanks for that.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Happens all the time. If you seemed like assholes, I would have let you go. And get hit on, like, ten times, when you’re out with your wife.’

Danny headed quickly for the door. Joe followed, laughing.

‘You should have bought it. I wish he’d let you.’

‘I’m not an asshole, remember?’

‘Here we go,’ said Joe. ‘Open.’

They walked in to Dawg On It and the backwards motion of Buck Torrance in a purple cowboy shirt and tight white jeans with purple diamanté paw prints on the pockets. He didn’t hear them over the vacuum cleaner, but turned it off when he caught their reflection in the mirror.

‘Hi. Buck?’ said Joe.

‘Yes.’

‘Detectives Lucchesi and Markey, NYPD. You’re the promoter at Bed, Bad and Beyond?’

‘Yes, sir. I am. Can I help you?’ said Buck.

‘I was speaking with Mark Branham from Gay Alliance. He said you were the man to talk to. We’re looking into some pretty violent attacks on men that have happened over the last year,’ said Joe.

‘Gay men,’ said Buck.

‘One of them was gay. We were wondering if we showed you a few photos …’

‘Sure. Go ahead.’ Buck took the photos. ‘No to this guy, doesn’t look familiar. No again. And yeah. I know this guy’s face. That’s William Aneto.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘I’d seen him around – in bars, in the club, whatever, so I knew his face. And then there were the posters all around the place last year. People lit candles on the street by the club, that’s it. I’m sorry.’

‘Did you notice him with any particular crowd, any one guy?’

‘I just didn’t know him that well. Do you want to leave those photos here with me? I could ask around for you?’ said Buck.

‘No. We’ll hold onto them. Thanks for your help.’

‘My pleasure. If you need anything else, let me know.’

‘Sure,’ said Danny.

‘Should guys be worried around here?’

‘Don’t be,’ said Joe. ‘And you don’t want people staying away from the store because you’re freaking them out.’

‘Yeah. Who’s going to dress all the dogs in the neighborhood if you go out of business?’ said Danny.

‘Sweetheart? Those dogs you see out there? A lot of them? Don’t even have names.’

Danny frowned.

‘Those little doggies are sniffing butts so their owners can. The ohmygod-let-me-stop-talk-to-you-bout-your-dog/enough-about-the-dog-what-about-me approach. I mean, this store is, like, a major pick-up joint. You want to check out the dog run at Waterside Park. Sit on a bench there and you’ll have a date in no time.’

Danny was standing at one of the shelves trying to put something back where he found it.

‘That little red dog collar isn’t you,’ said Buck.

‘You haven’t met his wife,’ said Joe.

‘Wife?’

‘Funny,’ said Danny.

‘I know,’ said Buck. ‘Look, seriously? I know it’s hard for you to work a case like this. I’ve seen it before. I mean, gay men spread themselves far and wide. But they get to know the ones who like it rough and the ones who like it
way too
. So if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.’

‘This guy is really wrong,’ said Joe. ‘He’s not someone you want to be alone in a room with.’

‘Oh don’t worry about me.’ He laughed. ‘I’m straight, sweetheart.’

Danny and Joe paused, then walked out onto the street and took a left towards the car.

‘He is fucking serious,’ muttered Danny, waving back to Buck.

‘He is,’ said Joe.

Back at the office, Reuben Maller called again.

‘Joe? I’ve come up with a loose profile for you. Want me to fax it through?’

‘Machine’s bust,’ said Joe. ‘Can you run it by me now?’

‘I would say – surprise, surprise – white male in his thirties, most likely lives alone. He will come across as quite a regular guy. He won’t give off any weird vibes. He lives in the city – we’ve got one victim in SoHo, two on the Upper West Side. He’s mobile, drives to and from the scene. Reasonably stable work history, but probably with gaps in between jobs or maybe with a job that
means he works alone, but has intermittent interaction with people. He must spend a lot of time alone to finely tune this fantasy of his. There’s hardcore evidence of overkill at the scenes, which suggests all this is personal, so maybe you should be looking at linking the victims or maybe they’re people who slighted him along his path.

‘The guy is a mixed offender. He plans well: he gets in to the apartments easily, no forced entry, so he must be doing something right. He brings tools with him: his hammer, his twenty-two caliber handgun. He doesn’t leave behind any evidence. Yet his attack is frenzied, which implies he also lets his control slip.

‘Think carefully about the locations. Killers usually ease themselves into it by operating in an area that’s very familiar to them, so we could be looking at someone who lives on the Upper West Side or grew up there, same goes maybe for SoHo.’

‘Great,’ said Joe. ‘Thanks for that. Did you come up with anything sexual? You know, the whole nudity thing?’

‘I’m just not getting that. It seems more like a humiliation thing. Or a control thing. I’d be surprised if there was a sexual motivation. But as they say, guarantee: no guarantees.’

‘Sure.’

‘Listen, if you need anything else—’

‘Yeah, I’ll be in touch.’

* * *

When Joe got home, Anna was sitting at the kitchen counter with a stack of pages she had cut out of magazines. Joe kissed her on the cheek, then reached out to pull open the tall narrow cabinet that was wedged between the fridge and the wall. It rocked wildly from side to side.

‘This thing feels like it is going to fall apart every time I touch it.’

‘Pull it quick,’ said Anna, ‘and lift it at the same time.’

He closed it and tried it again.

‘I have a lot of practice here all the time,’ she said.

‘Well maybe I can tempt you out on Friday. It’s Gina’s birthday. Danny has booked a table for the four of us in Pastis. Are you OK with that?’

She paused, but then nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘You can always cancel at the last minute. No pressure.’

‘Thanks.’

‘But I’d love you to be there.’

‘I know’.

‘Let me go change,’ he said. He went upstairs, took a shower, then came down in jeans and a blue T-shirt with the logo of a bar he never remembered being in. He sat down on the sofa and turned on the television. He barely noticed the channels he was changing until he hit a press conference. The Police Commissioner was standing at a podium reading from a statement.

‘…
established a link with two previous murders,
the first of which happened in September last, that of
William Aneto, and the second in December of Gary
Ortis.
’ The room erupted. The Commissioner continued. ‘
All three victims were male, aged between
thirty and forty years old and were brutally attacked in
their place of residence and shot dead. A twenty-two
caliber handgun was used in each of the crimes. There
was no sign of forced entry, so we’re investigating the
possibility that these men knew their killer. A task force
working out of Manhattan North Homicide has been
put together to handle the investigation
.’

Questions were shouted from all over the room:

‘
Are you saying there is a serial killer loose in New
York?
’

‘
What I’m saying is that we have established a pattern
between three homicides that have taken place in the
city in the past year
.’

‘
Why did you not establish a pattern sooner? The
first murder happened almost a year ago.’

‘
These three crimes were committed in different parts
of the city over a period of a year and did not initially
appear to be connected. For reasons I can not go into at
this time, when we went back and got together with
detectives handling each case, a pattern emerged
.’

‘
How did he gain access to the apartments?
’

‘
Like I said, there was no sign of forced entry. We
have to presume for now … the … uh … caller …
was let in by the victims or someone familiar with the
residences
.’

‘
Were these doormen buildings?
’

‘
One was
.’

‘
Have you spoken to the families? How did they
respond?
’

‘
Yes. We have already spoken to each of the victim’s
families and have impressed upon them our commitment
to finding their sons’ killer
.’

‘
William Aneto’s mother has been extremely
outspoken in her dissatisfaction with your handling of
her
son’s
case
—’

‘
We have spoken with Mrs Aneto who continues to
assist us with our investigation. That’s all I have to say
on that matter at this point
.’

‘
Have you established a connection between the
victims?
’

‘
That is something we are looking into
.’

‘
Gay Alliance has recently been raising awareness of
the first anniversary of the murder of William Aneto.
Do you think there is a homosexual motive to the
killings?
’

‘
It is important not to jump to any conclusions in the
early stages of an investigation
.’

‘
What advice can you give the public?
’

‘
No-one is to panic, here. I would say what we always
say: be alert, don’t open your door to strangers, ask to
see ID from anyone purporting to be from the gas
company, etc. And obviously, if anyone out there has
information on any of these crimes, could they please
contact
Crimestoppers
confidentially at 1800 577 TIPS.
That’s 1800 577 TIPS
.’

‘
Do you have any suspects?
’

‘
We are working through a list of names that are
linked in some way to our three victims. Ladies and
gentlemen, that’s all we have time for here, today. Thank
you for your cooperation
.’

‘Yeah, thanks for letting me know, you fucking douche-bags,’ said Joe. ‘And what about – hey, we didn’t make a connection because people don’t know how to fill out a form or fucking communicate with people?’

He changed channels again and every news broadcast he saw had the story.

‘
This perpetrator comes to the homes of his victims.
We have no information right now as to how he gains
access
…’

‘
This dates back to last
year’s
murder of thirty-
one-
year-
o
ld actor, William Aneto. His body was discovered
in his Upper West Side apartment
…’

‘
The last person to see Gary Ortis alive is with us
right now
…’