The Frenzy Way (29 page)

Mace returned to the squad room with a weight on his shoulders the likes of which he’d never felt before. It had been hard enough to discuss Patty’s murder in operational terms at One PP, but now he had to wear a stoic mask and lead his team when all he wanted to do was scream at the sky. He knew he needed to put all career considerations aside and take whatever risks were necessary to apprehend the killer stalking his city.

Willy sat staring at Patty’s desk with a morose expression on his face. He hadn’t shaved, so stubble shaded his scalp, and his bloodshot eyes suggested a hangover or lack of sleep or both. A jar with Patty’s name scrawled on a piece of masking tape sat on her desk, already overflowing with cash donations for her family. Grim-faced detectives crisscrossing the bull pen nodded at Mace, signaling to him that they were ready to do whatever he required of them. One of their own had fallen, and someone had to answer for it.

Watching Gibbons juggle phone calls in the CO’s office, Mace rapped on Willy’s desk. “My office.”

Leaving his door open, he sat at his desk and flipped through astack of handwritten messages, ignoring the deeper stack of reports related to the disastrous previous night. Willy closed the door behind him.

“You look like shit,” Mace said.

“Yeah? Maybe you’d like to send me home.”

“You need a personal day?”

Setting his hands on Mace’s desk, Willy leaned forward. “I need to catch the scumbag who killed my partner, and I can’t do that warming the bench.”

“I’m not going to get into a pissing contest with you. I’ve just had this whole mess dumped in my lap. I’m on a short leash here, with limited time to deliver results.”

“So put me back in the field where I can do you some good.”

“I couldn’t do that if I wanted to, which I don’t. I need you here too much.”

“To be your personal secretary? I’m a
murder police
.”

Mace sat back in his chair. “I have to go out for a few hours. I need you to help coordinate things with Landry here when he gets in. Understand? I need you to help take charge of this operation until I get back.”

Willy’s posture relaxed. “Yeah, I understand.”

“Go shave and fix yourself up, or this isn’t going to fly.”

Willy nodded, and as he turned to leave, Gibbons entered.

“Tony, Stalk’s got a visitor. A woman he used his phone call to contact. She confirms he’s staying with her. Should I let her see him?”

Leaning to one side, Tony glimpsed a woman standing in the waiting room: brunette, five feet tall, hands stuffed in the pockets of a black raincoat. Something about her looked familiar, but he couldn’t ID her from his angle.

“Just let him go, but make sure we have her contact info. Have a car take them to the impound lot to get his vehicle if that’s what they want.”

“Okay.”

“Don, I have to step out for a few.”

Gibbons looked surprised.

“It’s case related. Willy’s going to call in every extra body he can and coordinate them. Do you mind sticking around until Landry comes on?”

Gibbons cast a sideways glance at Willy. “I’d planned to stick around for a while anyway.”

“Thanks. We’re going to run three overlapping ten-hour shifts, fully manned. I want you to get started on the schedule.”

“You got it.”

The three men exited Mace’s office, and Gibbons returned to the CO’s office while Willy headed into the men’s locker room. As Mace passed the waiting area, he made eye contact with the woman who’d come for Stalk. She seemed to recognize him too, although she made no move to speak to him. It wasn’t until he was halfway down the stairs leading to the street that he remembered Angela Domini—if that was her real name—from Synful Reading. What possible connection could she have to Stalk? He was tempted to turn back and question her, but he expected Chu to arrive at the squad room any minute, and he didn’t want to risk being ordered to remain on-site. He had a task to perform that couldn’t wait.

Thirty-five minutes later, he had just merged onto I-87 north, heading toward Albany, when his cell phone rang. Without needing to check the display to know who was calling, he pressed the speaker button. “Mace.”

“Tony, it’s Louis Chu. I’m standing in your squad room. Where the hell are you?”

“On my way to Ossining.”

“Sing Sing?” Chu was silent for a moment while he added two plus two. “Rodrigo Gomez. Please tell me what bearing he has on the massive bag of shit you just inherited.”

Mace wanted to say,
I need to reawaken my hunting instincts
, but didn’t see that washing with Chu. “I’m just following a hunch. Something I needto eliminate from my list of possibilities. Don’t ask me why, but my gut says he ties into all of this.”

“I’ve seen nothing to support that theory,” Chu said with stronger emphasis than usual.

“Let’s just say I’m thinking outside the box and leave it at that.”

“This sounds like a waste of time to me, and time is not a luxury you have.”

“I’m already halfway there. Willy is reporting to me every half hour, and Landry will be there in ten minutes. I’ll be back before you know it. I’ve already arranged the interview. Please don’t tell me to turn around.”

More silence preceded Chu’s response. “All right, but I don’t like it. Consider that on the record.”

“Understood.”

Chu hung up, and Mace followed the Hudson River into Ossining. A century earlier, when prisoners from New York City had been ferried to the new prison, named after the Sint Sinck Mohegan Indian tribe that had once occupied the land, the phrase “sent up the river” had been coined. Mace drove through the quiet town, thirty miles north of New York City, in Westchester County. As he passed a library and a single mini-mall, he told himself that the prison, which contained fifteen thousand inmates, served as the town’s primary industry. Up to five thousand civilians worked at the facility each day.

The winding road took him away from the Hudson and up a hill, then back toward the river. An American flag on a pole came into view and then the prison’s upper level. Three long rows of buildings descended the opposite side of the hill, facing the river. He followed a fork in the driveway to a restricted security booth used by employees and visiting officials. Buses transporting visitors followed the other drive. At the security booth, he presented his ID to a dour-faced corrections officer. A moment later, cyclone gates topped with coiled razors parted, admitting him. Driving to the visitors’ center, he glimpsed fortified guardtowers manned by officers with machine guns. He scanned the self-contained community, taking in a fire station, a hospital, even a museum.

It had taken him a total of fifty minutes to reach the maximum security prison for men closest to New York City. Before the state had banned capital punishment in 1971, the prison’s electric chair had claimed numerous individuals, among them Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, the head of Murder, Inc.; serial killer and cannibal Albert Fish; and convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In another time, Rodrigo Gomez would have faced the chair. Now he served life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Mace sat behind the Plexiglas partition, which rose four feet from the counter. He had parked in a garage and had checked his Glock and the .38 he wore strapped to his ankle at the security desk. Grateful to have been admitted with a minimum of fuss, he had nevertheless observed the usual assortment of mothers, wives, and children undergoing the admission process required for visitors.

A door on the other side of the glass opened, and he experienced an involuntary shudder. A guard walked a short man in an orange jumpsuit toward him. Inmates wore street clothes inside but had to change into jumpsuits to face visitors. Gomez had grown his hair long, and thick whiskers covered the lower half of his face. He might have resembled the classic interpretation of Jesus if not for his dark, almost black, eyes.

Mace had never forgotten those eyes, which exhibited extreme intelligence and derangement at the same time. As Gomez sat opposite him, he almost appeared cross-eyed. The Full Moon Killer reached for the phone, and Mace did the same.

“Sheriff Mace,” Gomez said with a malevolent smile.

“Captain.”

“It was just detective when you brought me in.”

“Things change. People progress. Situations evolve.”

The wildness drained from Gomez’s face. “But your situation evolved because of me, didn’t it?”

“If you mean that I was promoted because you murdered five women or because I caught you, the answer is no. In the police department, a detective has to take a test to become a lieutenant and then another one to make captain.”

“I’m surprised to see you here,
Captain
.”

Mace said nothing.

“I’m glad it’s you who came, though. I thought it was that reporter Rice again. I’m tired of him.”

We have that much in common, Mace thought.

“That was some book he wrote, huh?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that.” Why did he feel compelled to explain himself? “He asked for my cooperation but I refused.”

“Don’t be so modest. You came off looking like a real hero.”

“Most of those quotes were cobbled from the newspapers. Some were made up.”

“Yeah? Well, I
did
cooperate. I told him my whole life story.”

“So I’ve heard.” Gomez’s father had deserted him, his mother, and his younger sister. Then his mother’s boyfriend had beaten him. When he’d caught the bastard molesting his sister, he’d put him in a coma. By the time Gomez was released from the youth facility, his mother had become a crack whore and his sister had been placed in foster care. He’d run with a gang for a short while, but he proved incapable of functioning even within that society. At the trial, he had admitted to killing his first prostitute at the age of twenty.

“We got a copy here in the library. It’s all worn-out and falling apart because it’s the first book cons read when they arrive. Everyone wants to know all about me. You might be a star on the outside, but on the inside it’s all about me. Did they shoot that TV movie yet? I hope they cast someone cool as me, not some soap opera faggot.”

“Is that why you did it, Rodrigo? To be famous?”

Gomez stared at him for a long moment. Mace felt like he was being evaluated. “No, man. I didn’t kill those women to be famous. And I didn’t do it because of all the hostility I felt toward my mother, either. I’ve heard that shit from one shrink after another. They’re all wrong.”

“Then why? It never came out in the trial, and Rice only guessed at your motives.”

“What do you care after all this time?”

Mace debated how much to tell him. “Can’t you guess?”

Gomez snorted. “I knew the second I saw you. You’re after the Wolf Man, aren’t you?”

Mace tried not to show any emotion, including surprise. “That’s right.”

“That’s an ambitious boy you got there. Killed a cop, wow.” He leaned closer to the glass, and his voice turned cold. “I wish I’d done that.”

Mace didn’t allow his expression to change. “Do you? Do you wish you’d killed me?”

Gomez shook his head. “No. I owe you but not that way.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. “Why do you owe me?”

“Because you stopped me. You stopped the killing. Not in here.” Gomez looked around the room. “But these people don’t count, do they? Used to be cats who checked in tried to mess with me to prove how bad they were. So I made examples out of them. Bit one guy’s nose off. Ate another dude’s fingers. Did some things I won’t cop to just for your entertainment. Now no one messes with me.”

He’s going offtrack. Got to rein him in. “You wanted to be stopped?”

An almost imperceptible nod. “Hell yes. More than you’ll ever know. I didn’t get off on killing, no matter what anyone says. That’s the difference between me and this new guy. He gets off on it big-time. Gets off on the attention, on toying with you. Not me. I hated doing the deed. I hated myself for giving in to the beast.”

Mace’s heart skipped a beat. “The beast?”

“The animal inside me. The monster. Always fighting to get loose, to be free. I tried to keep it under control, to bury it deep inside, but it always tore its way out. An uncontrollable rage to kill. I couldn’t stop it. I tried to kill myself a bunch of times, but I never had the guts to go through with it. The urge always came back stronger. It …
called
to me.”

“What about now?”

“Look around you. It doesn’t matter if it gets loose in here. It’ll never truly be free again. And that’s what I prayed for.” He swallowed. “Thank you kindly, Sheriff.”

Mace tried not to show how stunned he felt. “Rodrigo, why the full moon? You killed three women, laid low for a month, then killed two more.”

“The moon?” Gomez’s eyes glazed over. “The moon sang to me. It touched my core, my inner being. It put me in touch with my true self. And I hated it. This other guy you’re after? He loves the moon, loves the night. I can tell. He’s like me except that he’s not afraid of his true nature. He knows who he is. What he is. And he
likes
it.”