“Are you a doctor, Alex?” he asked then.
“I am. A psychologist,” I said.
“Ah. One for the books, then.”
“Now, I told you about Josh. Give me something in return,” I said. “Are there other victims we should know about? Tell me how many you’ve killed over the years.”
“I’m sorry,” Creem said, “but we’re out of time for today. Isn’t that what you shrinks always say?”
“Hang on. One more question.”
“It was fun while it lasted, detective, but I think we both know I’m already well beyond your reach. I wouldn’t go to too much trouble if I were you.”
“Creem, wait!” I said, but it was too late. He’d already hung up.
When I set down my phone, I could see on Valente’s face that he hadn’t gotten anywhere. Also that he was good and pissed by now. We’d just had a decent shot at Creem, and once again he’d slipped through our fingers.
Maybe for the last time.
CHAPTER
97
I TRIED CALLING CREEM’S NEW NUMBER BACK, BUT ALL I GOT WAS A GENERIC machine-generated voice mail. He’d probably destroyed the phone as soon as he hung up on me.
Right away, I turned my attention back to his home office. Maybe it would give us some clue about where he’d planned on running.
By all appearances, Creem was fastidiously tidy. Possibly even a little OCD. Everything about his house was well ordered, right down to the matching letterboxes, pencil cup, and stapler sitting at perfect right angles on the desk. It was easy to see as the outward manifestation of a man who needed to control every aspect of his universe—from the mundane physical details to the repetitive, hyper-precise way he’d cut up each of his victims.
Bergman’s murders had been self-similar as well, but there was a difference. With every kill, Bergman had been less controlled. Each one of those young hustlers had been stabbed and mutilated a little more than the one before. In retrospect, Bergman was the ticking time bomb, waiting to go off. Creem was more like the Swiss clock.
From his desk, I worked my way around the office, opening drawers, checking files, and even lifting up furniture to look underneath. It wasn’t until I got to the black lacquered media console by the door that I found anything at all out of place.
There, at the back of the cabinet behind a boxed set of date-ordered AMA journals, I found three matching pewter photo frames. It looked like they’d been thrown back there, rather than placed in any kind of deliberate way.
When I pulled them out, I saw the glass was mostly gone, with several shards sitting on the floor of the cabinet itself. Each photo was of the Creem family. There was a group shot in front of a massive Christmas tree; one picture of Miranda Creem, standing on a beach somewhere; and a hinged double frame, with side-by-side school photos of Creem’s two daughters.
All three women—Miranda, Chloe, and Justine Creem—were attractive, tall, and blond, I saw. If anything, the two girls were an even closer match to Creem’s slate of victims than their mother was.
And then there was the undeniable kicker. Each photo had been pierced with some kind of sharp object, like someone had driven a pair of scissors right through them. Three times each. Everything in threes.
That’s who he was trying to kill, wasn’t it? Creem had been methodically—and symbolically—erasing the three women who had left him after his scandal. If he’d gone straight for them, it would have been too suspicious. So he did the next best thing. He went after a theoretically endless supply of surrogates, maybe as a way of keeping himself from actually having to kill his own family.
Or maybe he was just building up to it.
I ran upstairs to find Valente. He was in the second-floor master bedroom, going through Mrs. Creem’s desk when I got to him.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Where’s Creem’s family right now?” I said.
“Rhode Island. They’ve been staying at her parents’ house in Newport, last I heard. Why?”
I held up one of the mutilated photos to show him.
“Because I don’t think he’s done yet,” I said.
CHAPTER
98
“Bus 53 leaving for New York, Bridgeport, Providence, and Boston WILL be boarding in ten minutes. Ticketed passengers should proceed to the loading area at this time.”
Elijah Creem stood at the bathroom mirror in a downtown Philadelphia bus station, looking at himself and making sure he was good to go for the next leg.
He touched the back of his neck, where the latex was invisibly spirit gummed to his skin. He patted the dark wig and adjusted the undergarment. It was a whole new appreciation, really, for what women went through. The makeup was no problem, but the body shaper alone was an all-day ordeal.
Still, it was incredibly effective. It wasn’t himself he saw looking back from the streaked, dirty mirror. It was a vaguely unfortunate woman of a certain age, with liver-spotted skin and a small but pronounced wattle under her chin. Even the yellow smoker’s teeth were individually rendered veneers. If Creem had ever had a masterpiece, this was it.
So far, nobody had even batted an eyelash in his direction. Not the old fatty who sold him his bus ticket at Union Station, and not the numbnut kid who sat next to him all the way from DC. The whole getup had allowed him to sail right out of Washington unnoticed, even if it was on a goddamn Greyhound bus. This wouldn’t be the last indignity of his little tour, but hopefully it would all be worth it in the end.
Rhode Island. Florida. South America. That was the idea. He’d already arranged passage on a Trinidadian cargo ship out of Miami. After that, it was just a skip to the mainland. Once he made his way to Buenos Aires, he could start to feel out the surgery community to see who might be safe to approach about some major work.
It wouldn’t be too much trouble lying low in the meantime. He had eleven million in gold, held in a numbered account at Banco Macro. Plenty to live on, if he was careful. And with US extradition priorities being what they were, he’d be more than safe. It was all about the drug wars now. Nobody paid attention to someone like him once you reached a certain distance.
Meanwhile, as long as he was stateside, Elijah Creem knew full well how to stay invisible—even standing in the middle of a public ladies’ room.
When the bathroom door opened, Creem let his hand fall away from his face. He took a plum-colored lipstick out of the purse he carried—one of Miranda’s cast-offs—and busied himself with it at the mirror.
He kept his eyes forward, watching the young woman’s reflection as she passed behind him and let herself into one of the toilet stalls. She was blond, and pretty, in a trashy sort of way. The kind of girl you might see riding alone on a Greyhound bus.
Was she perfect? Not by any stretch, but it sent a slight itch through Creem’s palm, all the same. As he put the lipstick back in the purse, he let his fingers graze over the handle of a number eighteen scalpel, tucked into one of the side pockets.
As the girl’s yellow panties slipped down to gather around her sandals near the floor, he turned slowly to face the row of stalls. He checked the entrance again.
It was tempting. So tempting. It had been too long since he’d been able to use a real instrument.
Still, the bus station was crowded. He had a transfer to make. And there would be plenty of opportunity to use the scalpel, soon enough.
“Hey!” The girl’s voice cut right through his thoughts. “Someone’s in here!”
Creem looked down to realize he’d already put a hand on the stall door. His size twelve canvas espadrilles were no doubt showing under the partition wall.
“Oh!” he said. “Sorry!”
His affected voice was something less than ladylike, but it passed well enough. He could see the girl now, just a sliver of her through the crack, hunched over and reaching to hold the stall door closed between them.
“You can relax, sweetheart,” he added. “You’re safe.”
She didn’t offer any response,
and really, why would she? There was no way for her to know that, on this particular day, she was the luckiest little piece of trash in Philadelphia.
As Creem reached the bathroom door, he turned back one more time.
“You know, you might think about those bags under your eyes before they get away from you,” he said.
“What?” the girl called back.
But Creem was already gone.
CHAPTER
99
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, DR. CREEM STEPPED OUT OF A TAXI IN FRONT OF THE house in Newport. The driver took his suitcase from the trunk, called him ma’am, and wished him a good night before he took off.
So far, so good.
The place was dark, but he’d brought one of Miranda’s keys from home. He let himself in through the porte cochere entrance and up to the grand hall that ran down the center of the old place. It was one of those eight-bedroom, twelve-bathroom deals they called a “cottage” around here. Typical WASP understatement.
It was ridiculous, really. Miranda had been rich as Croesus long before the two of them had ever met. Her parents—in Provence for the season—had some kind of bottomless fortune, tied to half a million acres of sugarcane in Hawaii and Australia. Miranda’s stock options alone were worth a hundred million. She may not have married Creem for his money, but she sure as hell was divorcing him for it. The last six months had turned her into a vindictive, greedy little bitch. Her, and her two little clones. There was no preserving those relationships anymore, and no sense trying.
Just the opposite, in fact.
Creem skipped the nostalgia tour this time and went straight to the so-called blue room on the third floor. It was the one Miranda favored. He’d stayed in it several times himself. Chloe was even conceived in the room’s nineteenth-century sleigh bed. That’s where he stopped to change.
He peeled off the mask, the dress, and the godforsaken undergear, folding them carefully onto the bed. A duplicate pair of masks were rolled in Bubble Wrap inside his suitcase, for the two-day bus trip to Miami.
In the meantime, he took out a few of his own things and quickly re-dressed. He also took out three pairs of steel handcuffs, a roll of black packing tape, and a small, sealed bottle of chloral hydrate.
From the game table in the corner, Creem took one of the straight-back chairs and moved it to the space under the window by the bed. It was all planned out. Miranda would be the last to go, but she’d get the show of her life before she did.
The only thing he kept on him was the scalpel. He slid it carefully into his back pocket as he crossed to the window again and looked outside.
From here he could see where the white crushed-gravel driveway curved around the back of the house to a parking courtyard. There was no sign of Miranda or the girls yet, but there had been a Newport paper in the front hall, open to the movie section. Chances were, they wouldn’t be long.
As he stood there at the window, surveying the back of the house, something suddenly caught Creem’s eye. A flicker, or a reflection of movement in the glass.
He turned around fast to see the tall shape of a man, silhouetted in the bedroom door against the light from the hall.
“Elijah Creem?” the man said. “You need to come with me. You’re under arrest.”
Creem still couldn’t make out the face, but he recognized the deep tone of the man’s voice right away.
It was his new best friend, Alex Cross.
CHAPTER
100
MY GUESS IS THAT CREEM THOUGHT FLYING WOULD BE TOO RISKY. IT HAD taken him the better part of the day to reach the house in Newport over land.
Not me. With the favor of a Bell helicopter from the Bureau—and specifically from Ned Mahoney, who was now on the list of people I owed, big-time—Valente and I had gotten to Rhode Island in two and a half hours. We’d also contacted an investigative unit with the Newport County sheriff’s office. The house where Miranda Creem and her daughters were staying had been vacated long before Dr. Creem ever got there.
Given my previous contact with Creem, my psych background, and the disaster of Josh Bergman’s suicide, it was agreed I’d approach Creem first. I had a two-way radio clipped to my belt, with a backup mike on my cuff. A full team of local police and detectives were all now in position, just outside. Help was a word away, if I needed it.
When I flicked on the bedroom light, it looked to me as if Creem had some kind of lacerations around his face. Then I realized I was looking at the remnants of latex and glue from whatever mask had gotten him this far.
“I’ll be honest,” Creem said. “I’m surprised to see you.”
I motioned with the Glock in my hand. “Get down on your knees and lace your fingers behind your head,” I said.
Creem didn’t move. I could see him regrouping, and taking in the room around us. He was looking for a way out, even now.
“I have every right to be here,” he said, settling back into his usual superiority. “I let myself in with a key. You’re the one who’s trespassing. I’m here to see my wife.”
“I’ll bet you are,” I said. “Were you going to kill your daughters, too, Creem?”
He grinned at that, in a way I’d seen before. It was pure Elijah Creem, treading that fine line between confident and sociopathic.
“This is a bit of déjà vu, isn’t it?” he said. “That night we met in Georgetown, I offered you twenty thousand, or maybe it was thirty, for a little head start out the bedroom window.”
“I remember it didn’t get you anywhere,” I said.
“No. It didn’t, did it?” he said. He nodded several times, as if he were finally coming to the logical conclusion here.
But instead, Creem made a break for it. He put his hands on the back of a tall wooden chair and swung it all at once, right through the bedroom’s picture window. It brought down a shower of glass, even as he was climbing onto the sill to jump out.
I was right behind, nearly too late to grab him—but not quite. My hand closed around the back of his shirt just as he dropped. It pulled and ripped, but then he snapped back. His body bounced hard off the side of the house. For a brief moment, I lost my footing and nearly went out the window with him. If there had been any broken glass on the sill right there, it would have gone right into my gut.
“Give me your hand!” I shouted, even as he struggled, dangling at the end of my reach. A stream of cops was coming around the house now, and I could hear several others coming into the room behind me.
“Get off me!” Creem said. When he tried to slip out of his shirt, I leaned over and got a grip on his arm, to drag him back in.
That’s when he pulled the scalpel I didn’t even realize he had. He brought it up all at once and drove the tip right into the back of my hand.
A nauseating bolt of pain ran up my arm. I yelled out and let go before I could stop myself. It was a reflex as much as anything. Drops of blood from my hand followed him down to the ground, three stories below.
Creem pinwheeled his arms as he fell. The motion of it twisted his body around in the air, and there was no time to get himself upright. His legs would have broken anyway, but instead, he landed flat on his back, hitting the patio beneath us with a sickening thud.
Several officers, including Valente, closed in around him with weapons drawn.
“Don’t move!” one of them shouted. “Stay right where you are!”
It was a nonissue. At first I thought Creem was dead. Then I heard a slight moan. He turned his head a few inches to the side, and moaned again, but that was it.
Dr. Creem’s career was over.
Finally.
CHAPTER
101
ONCE I GOT MY HAND WRAPPED BY THE EMTS ON THE SCENE, I LEFT VALENTE in Rhode Island and flew back to DC in the middle of the night.
I didn’t hear anything en route, but Errico called me just as I was disembarking in Quantico. It turned out that Elijah Creem had snapped his spine in the fall, breaking two vertebrae. He’d also given
a full confession before they even got him to Newport Hospital. The way Valente put it, Creem had been broken in more ways than one by that fall. Not only was he headed to jail for the rest of his life, but he was going to be spending that time in a wheelchair. I can’t say I was too sorry.
I’d see Creem again at his trial, but for now I had other things on my mind.
Actually, just one. Ava.
I went straight to the office without going home. The best way to get back to my family was to get my report done in the quiet of the night, before the office started filling up.
The amount of administrative paperwork on something like this is staggering. The primary burden would fall to Valente, and also to Jacobs for the River Killer case. Each file would have to go through no fewer than seven levels of review at the department before it got its final sign-off. I’ve seen the process take upwards of six months. It’s a big part of what keeps me from trying to go any higher at MPD than I already am. At a certain level, you wind up spending all your time on paperwork and politics instead of in the field, where the real police work gets done.
By seven that morning, I’d written up a full account of the last twenty-four hours, and handed it off to Sergeant Huizenga when she came in for the day. She’d already been in touch with Valente, and her mood was as good as I’d seen it in weeks.
Just as well, since I had to give her my paperwork and ask for a few days off in the same breath.
“I know I just got back on,” I said, “but Ava’s been missing for three days now—”
Huizenga was blessedly cool about it. She waved me out of her office with the file I’d just handed her.
“Go, before I change my mind,” she said. “Find your girl, and get back here as soon as you can. And leave your phone on!”
There would be a dozen or more calls that day, with half a million questions about Creem and Bergman, but this at least gave me the space I needed to get my priorities back in order.
Alex Cross, Run Page 22