The Anniversary Man

by R.J. Ellory

′Ssshhh,′ Irving whispered.

  ′He saved our lives . . . and . . .′

  ′Enough now,′ Irving said. He took a tissue from the box on the shelf beside the bed and gently wiped the tears from Karen Langley′s cheeks. ′Rest,′ he whispered. ′Get some sleep, okay? Close your eyes and get some sleep.′

  The painkillers, the aftermath of anesthetic, the overwhelm and emotional devastation of all that had happened closed in on her and she succumbed, let herself go, for it was greater than her, and in that moment she too - just like Ray Irving - possessed nothing with which to fight.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  New York did mornings like no other place on earth. Different mornings for different seasons, but each unique. Perhaps those who lived there took no notice, became inured to their surroundings through familiarity and habit, but it was there, right before them, if only they′d stop to look.

  Every once in a while, but less frequently with the years, Ray Irving saw something in the city that was at once surprising and familiar, as if he were being reminded of an old friend, a forgotten lover, a house he′d lived in when life was a different thing. And it was in such brief moments that he saw beyond his work - past the faces of the dead, past those unfortunates left to bleed out alone as if life meant nothing much of anything at all - and recognized that, despite everything, he was still a human being, and his responsibility was to make it through the other side. The other side of what, he was sometimes unsure. But he had to make it through.

  Morning of Tuesday, December 19th, the clean light reached Irving as he stood on the little balcony of his apartment, looking at the silhouette of St Raphael′s against the bright sky, and considered all that had taken place since November 23rd. Perhaps there is a God, he thought, but he saw the way things were going and went into hiding.

  On Monday, November 27th, they identified the Anniversary Man. His name was Richard Franklin Segretti. Forty-one years old, hailed out of Malone, upstate New York. Head south along the I-30 out of Lake Placid, just a handful of miles before the St Lawrence separates you from Canada, and there you′d find a small town with small-town views and small-town people - good, hardworking people, and straight-minded, and it was from this unlikely setting that Segretti had come. People there knew the Segrettis - Richard and his younger sister, Pamela - and though the parents were now dead, though Pamela had moved south to Saratoga Springs where work was better paid and people weren′t so set in their views, the townsfolk of Malone still responded the way that all people respond when they learn of a killer in their midst: with disbelief and dismay; a feeling that if they had been so long unaware of something so important and profoundly disturbing, then what else might there be that they did not know.

  Suspicion became a shadow that would haunt them for weeks, even months, and then it would pass, and they would do their utmost to forget.

  And Segretti had visited with the Winterbourne group so many years before. Visited, but hadn′t stayed. Extensive research on Irving′s part couldn′t determine whether Segretti had ever survived an attack from some unknown serial killer. But then, as Karen Langley had reminded him, weren′t those the real unfortunates? The intended victims, those who survived but would never know the truth? The ones who stayed frightened for the rest of their lives for something they hadn′t done. She spoke of the articles that she and John Costello had planned to write. The forgotten victims. Perhaps Segretti was one of them, perhaps not. In the cold, hard light of day it hardly seemed to matter.

  Irving caught a squib in the New York Daily News:Town Residents Picket Killer House Tours

  ′It′s ghoulish,′ said Mr Jack Glenning, resident of Malone for twenty-three years. ′Folks coming up here all the way from New York to look at that house where Segretti lived. Heard some kids tore up part of the fence and stole it. Mementoes they wanted. Makes you wonder what the hell is going on with the world when teenage kids idolize someone like that.′

  Back of Richard Segretti there was no jacket, no list of priors, no childhood incidents of animal torture or arson, no six months in juvy. Segretti′s father was a logger, his mother a seamstress. Churchgoing people, committed to family values, dying within three years of one another, Segretti Senior from a stroke in the fall of ′99, his wife already dead from a heart attack in ′96. Richard Segretti had maintained the house precisely as it had been when his parents were alive, right down to his father′s reading glasses balanced on an opened copy of Serenade by James M.Cain on the nightstand beside his bed.

  Irving went to the house after the FBI, crime scene analysis and forensics had done their work. He took Jeff Turner with him. The place was pristine, immaculate, spotless. Books were arranged alphabetically on the shelves, as were CDs and video cassettes. In the kitchen the canned goods were stacked by contents, by use-by date, all of them lined up with the labels facing outward. A cupboard in the bathroom contained eleven bars of unopened soap, eleven tubes of toothpaste, eleven packets of dental floss, eleven new toothbrushes. They were all the same brand, the brushes all the same color. Along the halls and in the front room pictures were hung so the upper edge of the frame was precisely six foot, one and a half inches from the floor.

  Segretti′s height.

  In one room they found photograph albums, boxes of keepsakes from each killing he had carried out, all of them bagged and labeled and ready to transport to the DA′s office in preparation for Segretti′s trial. They found Carol-Anne Stowell′s clothes, a box of theatrical make-up, a number of hairs that matched James Wolfe caught in a stick of white greasepaint. Other such things.

  Irving and Turner drove back to New York in silence.

  Turner had also seen Costello′s apartment in the days since Costello′s death. The racks of journals, the CDs, the video cassettes, the DVDs - all the same, alphabetically arranged, dust-free and pristine. The kitchen, the bathroom, the way the towels were folded, the way the shower curtain was hung, each plastic hoop the same distance apart along the rail above the bath.

  The two homes could have been occupied by the same man.

  The similarity between Costello and Segretti set Irving to thinking - thinking too long and too hard until it gave him a headache. One man went one way, another took a different route. Irving remembered a quote from a film he′d seen about Truman Capote, how Capote had spoken of the similarities between himself and the killer, Perry Smith: It was as if we grew up in the same house, and then one day I went out the front door and Perry went out the back. Something like that.

  Irving caught himself counting things. Phone boxes. Girls with red hair.

  Like there was some kind of safety in numbers.

  After a while he stopped trying to make sense of it.

  There was no sense to make.

  The death of John Costello was investigated by an internal enquiry review. The NYPD Shooting Board questioned both Vernon Gifford and Ray Irving. Had Karen Langley been sufficiently well to appear she would have been called as an independent witness. The Board convened, interrogated, and adjudicated in her absence. The shooting of John Costello, though unfortunate, was deemed in policy. Gifford was neither suspended, reprimanded, nor given a one-eighty-one for excessive use of force.

  John Costello′s funeral was held at the church of St Mary of the Divine Cross on Sunday, December 3rd. Irving attended, but Karen Langley was not permitted release from the hospital. Alongside Irving were Bryan Benedict, Leland Winter and Emma Scott from the City Herald. Irving took only Gifford, Hudson and Turner along, for he knew that John Costello had not been a man for friends and wide social circles. Such life as John Costello had lived beyond the Herald and his brief involvement with the Fourth Precinct, was represented by George Curtis and Rebecca Holzman from the Winterbourne Hotel group, both clearly shattered by John′s death. There were no family members to say words of remembrance, so Irving rose and spoke for them. Later he couldn′t remember what he′d said, but Gifford said it had been appropriate and meaningful, and Costello would have app
roved.

  Segretti was bound over for trial by the state. His sister chose not to drive down from Saratoga Springs to visit with him, and she refused to give statements to the press.

  Within a week it was as if neither John Costello nor Richard Segretti had ever lived. Each was relegated to the collective memory of New York, a memory that seemed caught somewhere in limbo, a memory filled with things that no-one hoped to recall, that everyone wished had never taken place. The Segretti trial would not begin for six months, perhaps a year, and by then everyone would have forgotten who he was.

  It was while talking with Irving that Vernon Gifford said, ′He′ll spend the rest of his life knowing he didn′t win after all, that he wasn′t smarter than everyone else in the end.′

  ′Yes,′ Irving replied. ′And now he′ll have to face the McDuffs and Gacys and Arthur Shawcrosses of this world in the prison yard. They deserve each other, don′t you think?′

  It was so true, so fitting. A beautiful irony.

  As of the third week of December the body of Karl Roberts, ex-Seattle PD, one-time private investigator, had still not been found. There was insufficient manpower available to continue the search, but it was presumed that he must be dead, that Segretti had killed him, had assumed his identity for the purposes of getting close to Grant, and from there to Irving and Langley.

  How had Grant come to hire him? How had Segretti passed himself off as Roberts and secured employment from a grieving parent? Grant told Irving how they′d met, and it had been too simple for words. Segretti had staked out a bar where Grant was known to drink every once in a while. He had waited until Grant was inside, had gone in with a photograph of a missing girl, asked the bartender some questions, acted insistent, aggressive almost, and Grant had swallowed the bait.

  ′Said he specialized in missing kids,′ Grant told Irving. ′Said he was ex-PD, had contacts across New York, New Jersey, Atlantic City, the entire eastern seaboard. Said he knew people who knew people. He came across as a very genuine guy, told me he had two daughters, grown-up now, away at college, and he empathized. I really felt he was a sincere and dedicated man. He said he would be happy to help, if only to use his contacts to get me some inside information on the case, you know? I can′t believe it . . . I just cannot believe that I sat in a bar buying drinks for the guy that murdered my daughter . . .′

  Irving believed it; believed it without hesitation. He understood now, if he hadn′t already, that human beings were capable of pretty much anything.

  That morning, December 19th, 2006, Ray Irving turned away from the clean light, away from the silhouette of St Raphael′s, and picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. He paused for a moment at the door, then closed it securely behind him and left the building. The gridlock had eased, and it was not too many minutes before he pulled up in the car park back of St Clare′s Hospital.

  Karen Langley was in the lobby waiting for him, a weekend case at her feet. Her head was still bandaged and, although the swelling had diminished, the ghost of her injuries was visible around her eye, the line of her jaw. It had been the better part of a month, yet for both of them it felt as if no time had passed at all.

  Irving had seen Karen Langley only the day before, but each time he visited he realized how differently he felt, how important her survival was to him, how devastated he would have been had she not made it through.

  Such events defined mortality.

  ′Ray,′ she said.

  He smiled, helped her up, took her case and walked her out to the car.

  They reached his apartment before either of them had a chance to really say anything of significance, but once inside, standing in the small kitchen, he put his arms around her, held her close, and stayed silent while she cried.

  Eventually she sat down. Irving made coffee, listened as she talked, her words falling over one another as if a month of disconnection from the world needed to be remedied in minutes.

  And at last, after she′d said whatever she needed to say, she asked the big question: Why.

  And Irving turned and went to her, sat beside her and took her hand.

  He held it tight, shook his head slowly, and smiled a sad and gentle smile. ′I don′t know,′ he said quietly. ′And I don′t know that we′ll ever find out.′

  Karen looked away for a moment, out through the small window into a New York morning, and then she turned back. ′I have to convince myself that I don′t need to know,′ she said.

  For a while they were silent, and then Irving reached out and touched the side of her face.

  ′Stay,′ he whispered. ′Here. With me. Stay here, Karen.′

  And Karen Langley closed her eyes, and she breathed deeply, and when she looked at Ray Irving there were tears in her eyes.

  ′We′re not supposed to be alone, are we?′ she asked, and there was something in the question that told him it was not meant to be answered.

  And so he did not try.

  AUTHOR′S NOTE

  Undoubtedly it would be comforting if the many serial killers who played a major role in the drama that unfolded in these pages were a product of my fevered imagination but, sadly for humanity, they were not.

  Extensive research was undertaken to ensure that names, dates, times and locations were as accurate as possible. I also used a number of documented reports, choosing those that I believed to be the most reliable and trustworthy. But murderers are liars, and sometimes conflicting statements left precise details open to an element of doubt.

  On the matter of my chosen location, New York, I must ask for the readers′ indulgence. I took a few liberties with minor geographical details purely for the purposes of the story. New Yorkers are understandably proud of their great city, truly one of the most remarkable in the Western world, and I hope that my dramatic license hasn′t offended.

  RJE