LoveMurder

by Saul Black

  But now, if she imagined offering that theory to Katherine, she pictured Katherine smiling, and the smile being an invitation to Valerie to know better, to see beyond what she needed to be true to what actually was true.

  You going to talk to Glass?

  I imagine I’ll have to. Oh joy.

  It was just after ten when she got home. She hadn’t quite realized, until she closed the apartment door behind her, how deeply the day had exhausted her. The apartment’s smell was still of new paint, clean laundry, and the polished oak parquet. Indian takeout Nick had brought home. He was asleep on the couch. The TV was on, sound low. AMC. Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. Comfort.

  She didn’t wake him. Instead she went to the dark-tiled bathroom and turned on the shower. She shed her clothes and stood for a moment naked in front of the mirror. Love had made her friends with her body again, after a long period of numbness to it. Nick’s desire had put her and her body back in quietly delighted cahoots. Katherine had said to her in one of the interviews: Don’t you know exactly the sort of God who would give you a body that was your greatest source of pleasure, but only by dint of the same design that made it your greatest source of pain? Valerie thought of the footage. Danielle Freyer suspended by her cuffed wrists at a height that left her on awkward tiptoe. Naked, gagged, drenched in sweat, bleeding, crying, her face twisted with misery. The Man in the Mask said to her: I know you’re looking for a way out of your body—but there isn’t one. And you have miles to go before you sleep. On her knees in front of him, Katherine had laughed, softly, and taken his cock deep into her mouth.

  Valerie turned away from her reflection and stepped into the shower.

  * * *

  Later, she lay in bed with Nick. She didn’t need to say anything. He didn’t need to ask. The day had left its aura around her. A big part of being Police was not needing to have the exchanges.

  They were silent a long time. Valerie thought of a conversation she’d had with her colleague Sadie Hurst not long after Katherine had been arrested. Sadie had said: You know what the first thing every guy in the world asks himself when he sees Katherine’s picture? He asks himself if he’d fuck her. The first question isn’t: How could she have done those things, tortured and killed those people? The first question is whether he’d fuck her, given the chance. This is every guy, Sadie had said. Including the guys we’re working with. And yeah, she’d added, seeing Valerie’s look, including Nick. You don’t believe me? Ask him. Valerie had asked him. Nick had said: That’s the first question a guy asks himself about any woman. Why would Katherine Glass be an exception? They’d been having breakfast in a diner. Big windows and sunlight winking on the silverware. Valerie had conceded, inwardly, that none of this was really news to her. Nick had said, after thinking about it: That’s not what bothers Sadie, anyway. What bothers Sadie is the question of whether knowing what Katherine did—what Katherine is like—makes guys want to fuck her more. Valerie had waited. No, Nick said. Not for me. She’d known he wasn’t lying. It had been their way from the start, not to bother lying to each other.

  He was still awake. “Are you afraid?” he asked her.

  “A little. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  No jokes or platitudes. She felt him dismiss them. Instead he put his arm around her.

  8

  “Okay, everyone seems to be here,” Captain Deerholt said, over the incident room’s murmur. “Has anyone not yet seen last night’s report?”

  Everyone had. The atmosphere in the windowless room was a mix of excitement and dread. Ed Pérez, Sadie Hurst, Rayner Mendelsund, Will Fraser, Valerie Hart. With the exception of Laura Flynn, who’d joined Homicide in 2011, they’d all worked the original Katherine cases, under the unpredictable authority of the FBI, once it had become apparent they were dealing with a serial. Three of the Bureau’s agents were here now, though Valerie recognized only Vic McLuhan, who’d been a special agent six years back and was now assistant special agent in charge. His colleagues were both around thirty, Agent Susanna Arden, a dark woman with a look of compact gymnastic flexibility, and Agent Christian Helin, a tall, lean guy with light-blue eyes and a trim blond beard.

  The room hushed.

  “Agent McLuhan?” Deerholt said.

  “Morning, everyone. Déjà vu here for all of us, so I’ll keep it brief. Technically we’re waiting on the DNA results from the Elizabeth Lambert murder, but given the indicators—specifically, the gold-and-ruby ring belonging to Danielle Freyer—we’re working on the assumption that this is in fact the man who partnered Katherine Glass in the serial case six years ago. As you all know, that individual has remained at large, but to our knowledge, and as far as database evidence can support, this is the first time he’s been active in the United States since the arrest of Katherine Glass, thanks to your own Detective Hart here.”

  “Fluke,” Ed Pérez said.

  “Lucky break,” Will Fraser said.

  A little weary laughter. McLuhan allowed it, smiled himself. Valerie made a satirical bow.

  “Obviously,” McLuhan continued, “everyone needs to go back through the original files for anything we might have missed, but for now, Valerie, could you just nutshell what we ended up with from Katherine Glass’s testimony?”

  Valerie got to her feet and stepped to the front of the room. “As you know,” she said, “Katherine played ball once she believed it would help weight her case in favor of diminished responsibility. She gave us a name—Lucien Chastain, which, assuming she was telling the truth, was the name by which she knew her lover. White male U.S. national, five eleven, fair-haired, blue eyes, thirty-four years old at the time, which would make him forty now. The composite artist rendering is in the files, for what it’s worth, and there are the stills from the videos in which he’s wearing the mask. According to Katherine he was highly intelligent, extremely wealthy, and could hack into any computer like its security was fresh air. His money was old Europe, apparently, though he left the details vague. Anyway, this is all in the files. The bottom line is that Katherine’s ‘Lucien Chastain’ doesn’t exist. We found plenty of candidates, none of them positively ID’d by Katherine and none with a fingerprint or DNA match. The Bureau’s investigation has established that we’re dealing with a professional ghost. Credit card transactions led to six different false identities, and following the cyber trail took us in an elegant circle. Katherine Glass wasn’t lying when she described him as a prodigy. The cyber smarts could have come through the military, possibly even Intelligence, though we know the Bureau pursued that line as far as it’s been possible to go and, so far, nada. In any case, we’ve got to assume the whole bag of tricks with this guy. Disguises, high mobility, resources, and a tech IQ off the chart. It’s more than likely he’s altered his appearance completely since the original killings.”

  “Did he communicate with us first time around?” Laura Flynn asked.

  “No,” Valerie said. “I don’t doubt he still does what he does because he enjoys it, but this is a new development. He’s savvy enough to know Katherine’s not getting out, so I’m not sure what to make of the alleged agenda.”

  “The jury’s still out on serials who communicate with the authorities,” Susanna Arden said. “Statistically, there’s no evidence that such communiqués increase the likelihood of catching the perp, but they massively increase the chances of securing a conviction if the perp is caught.”

  “In a lot of cases correspondence looks with hindsight like a killer’s cry for help,” McLuhan said. “Or at least the expression of a desire to be caught and stopped. I’m trying to keep an open mind, but in this case I’d say that’s definitely not where the smart money is.”

  “The tone’s all wrong for that,” Valerie said. “We’re dealing with ego, not self-sabotage. Either way—”

  “Excuse me, Detective Hart?”

  Everyone turned and looked to the door, where a young uniformed officer was standing with a manila envelope in her hands. She was wearing l
atex gloves.

  “This just came in the mail for you. I think you’ll want to see it right away. It’s been handled, obviously, but … I brought more gloves.”

  The room went silent. Valerie put on the gloves and examined the envelope. It was addressed to her; as far as she could tell in the same handwriting as the Adam and Eve postcard. On the seal, another handwritten line: You know who.

  “I need a … Anyone got a penknife? I don’t want to tear the writing.”

  Ed Pérez produced a Swiss Army knife. Valerie worked the blade in and slit the envelope carefully along its edge.

  Inside were six letter-size pages, held together with a paper clip. The first contained the following, which Valerie read aloud:

  Dear Valerie

  These pages contain the name and address of the next victim. Coded, obviously, in an interdisciplinary way. Hidden. Encrypted. There isn’t enough mystery in the human lot, even for the police, so I hope you’ll take this in the spirit in which it’s intended. Let me not be disingenuous: you won’t find it easy, since it’s personal to me. Crossword and sudoku specialists will be of little use to you. In fact I doubt the entire department’s pooled resources will yield a sufficiently broad frame of reference to see you through. You are very likely going to need outside help. Anyone spring to mind?

  The victims won’t be random. Elizabeth wasn’t random. Think laterally. I won’t tell you how long you’ve got, but the clock, to resort to cliché, is ticking. Good luck.

  The team had gathered around her. Valerie was aware of their collective body heat and suddenly rich mental focus. The sounds of the rest of the station going about its business seemed far away.

  “What does ‘disingenuous’ mean?” Ed Pérez said.

  “Insincere,” McLuhan said. “Pretending you know less than you really do.”

  Valerie went through the pages one by one. The first showed a printed grid, each square containing a letter of the alphabet, two or three hundred at least. Across the top of the grid a sequence of apparently random numbers. Along the left-hand axis what looked like Greek letters.

  The next page was pictures, three color reproductions of old paintings, with their titles printed alongside them: Giorgione, The Three Ages of Man. Piero della Francesca, The Resurrection. Signorelli, The Damned Consigned to Hell.

  The third page showed a poem, “Intimations of Immortality,” by William Wordsworth.

  “That’s the daffodils guy,” Laura Flynn said. “‘I wandered lonely as a cloud.’”

  Three more images on the next page: a still of Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct, just before the famous leg-uncrossing scene; a photo of a pack of “luxury cigarettes,” a brand called Nat Sherman, of which neither Valerie nor anyone else had ever heard; and a black-and-white reproduction of a head-and-shoulders portrait showing a slightly girlish big-eyed eighteenth-century gentleman in a dark jacket and white, large-collared shirt. An antique map of Italy on the next page. The last page contained a second grid, set out as the first, but with different letters of the alphabet in the squares.

  “Fucking great,” Will Fraser said.

  “Let’s write back and say we know it’s all bullshit,” Sadie Hurst said.

  “It probably is,” McLuhan said. “But he knows we can’t afford to make that assumption.”

  Precisely, Valerie thought. She imagined him smiling at the prospect of the hours this would eat up. The team was still tense and intrigued around her. She couldn’t help picturing them as a group of treasure hunters poring over the remains of a map. X marks the spot.

  “Okay, first things first,” McLuhan said. “Photograph these, then get the originals to Forensics. Everyone take a copy. Can’t possibly not be our guy, but let’s get it confirmed anyway. We’ve got people at the Bureau who can look at this for what he says it is, but frankly I do think it’s fuck-with-the-cops nonsense. The paintings…”

  “Katherine did two years of art history at Columbia before she dropped out,” Valerie said. The words felt toxic coming out of her mouth. “She owned a gallery. Art’s her thing. One of her things. Literature, too.” Everyone looked at her as if she’d just said something obscene.

  “You’re not suggesting…” Deerholt said.

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Valerie said. “But that’s what the ‘anyone spring to mind?’ line is about. He means Katherine. We’re going to have to find out if he’s been corresponding with her. Her mail’s checked, right?”

  “She gets a lot of mail,” Sadie Hurst said. “Mostly guys who want to fuck her, or marry her. Women, too, apparently. But yeah, it’s screened. Standard prison regs.”

  “All right,” McLuhan said. “This is one line of investigation, one of many, that’s all. Let’s not let the fireworks beguile us. What we’re dealing with right now is the murder of Elizabeth Lambert, so let’s do the work. We still have gaps in the forty-eight hours prior to her death. I want those filled in, and extended to at least a week. We’re not dealing with an opportunist, so he has to have been watching her. We’re still waiting on the home computer analysis, but that should come through by the end of today. CCTV footage from the coffee shop likewise. Ed and Laura, talk to the family members. Sadie and Rayner, neighborhood and work. Elizabeth didn’t have a steady boyfriend, as far as we know, but I want a list of possible sexual partners, dates, whatever. We need to talk to this guy Elizabeth allegedly slept with, Luke Russell. Agent Arden will be going down to L.A. this morning to question him. Valerie, you and Will are going up to Deer Park to talk to the neighbor, right? Treece?”

  “Yes.”

  “Red Ridge isn’t far from there, so you might as well look into this correspondence thing en route. I know the warden there, so I’ll call ahead.”

  A pause. Everyone in the room imagining Valerie and Katherine coming face-to-face, six years on. She didn’t know it for a fact but forced herself to assume they’d all (guiltily) seen the grotesque little Internet fictions the case had spawned. At the time, the tabloid press had made her, Valerie, a sex symbol: “Hartbreaker.” The online effects had been darker: fake porn images of other women’s bodies with hers and Katherine’s faces photoshopped in, sordid narratives of lesbian BDSM, invariably featuring her suffering at Katherine’s hands. The sort of thing Valerie knew she was supposed to rise above in weary superiority. But it had hurt her. No matter how clean you were, the world had the power to make you feel dirty.

  “You okay with that?” McLuhan said.

  “Absolutely,” Valerie said, though she could sense Will’s eyes on her: Bad idea, Val. Bad idea.

  “What about the postcard?” Ed Pérez said. “The fair warning?”

  “We can’t release that yet,” McLuhan said. “Technically—but it’s enough of a technicality—we don’t yet have forensic confirmation that this is Katherine’s guy.”

  “Yeah,” Ed said, “but there could already be someone out there who’s received one. If they end up dead and it turns out we had—”

  “We release it now it’s an open invitation to copycats for the price of a stamp. Let’s get the confirmation.”

  9

  Valerie drove. She could never bear being a passenger, whereas Will couldn’t care less. Besides, he teased her, you know I get a kick out of having a white lady chauffeur.

  “You talk to Treece,” he said to her. “I’ll deal with Katherine.”

  “Nope,” Valerie said.

  “Why give yourself the grief?”

  “It’s not grief, it’s work.”

  “You don’t know when to leave well enough alone.”

  “Who are you, my dad? Anyway, how’re your balls doing?”

  Will had had a testicular cyst removed a week ago.

  “They’re not happy. I’m supposed to be able to have sex, but every time I go near Marion it’s like I can hear a drumroll.”

  “You know the longer you leave it the more nervous you’ll get? Marion will have to start looking elsewhere.”

  “Thanks. She
thinks it’s hilarious, too, needless to say. Says I’m walking like the black John Wayne.”

  “I did notice you had a little delicacy in your gait.”

  “You’ve all got a castration fantasy. Marion was like that when we had the cat neutered. On the surface it was all, oh, poor Jasper, but you could see she was secretly delighted.”

  “You just have to ask her to be gentle with you.”

  “It’s fucking bad design. Why your balls have to hang right there between your legs I don’t know. Better off tucked inside the back of your skull or under your rib cage. Somewhere sheltered, for Christ’s sake.”

  They fell silent. No levity was enough to dispel the waiting weather system that was Katherine Glass. Valerie was very conscious of the brightness of the morning, the sunlight flaring on the freeway traffic, the pale asphalt, a hard blue sky and the shivering green of the occasional trees. The world that was lost to Katherine. She wondered what incarceration had done to the sprawling intelligence that had to spend itself somehow within the confines of a prison. She had a brief image of Katherine lying on her bunk, staring at the close ceiling, every moment a grain of sand she must count, time the size of a desert.

  “McDonald’s in a quarter mile,” Will said. “I didn’t get breakfast.”

  “You can’t eat your ball-anxiety away, you know.”

  “Yeah, but if I get fat enough Marion will leave me alone.”

  The interview with Nancy Treece had been straightforward, and unhelpful. Around six P.M. on Thursday evening Nancy had called over to Elizabeth’s to use her scanner for documents pertaining to Nancy’s divorce. The two women, who’d been friends for three years, ever since Nancy moved into the neighborhood, drank the better part of a bottle of white wine and chatted for an hour or so about Nancy’s settlement, then Nancy left. As far as she knew Elizabeth was planning on spending the evening alone, catching up on her guilty pleasure, House of Cards. And no, Elizabeth had said nothing to her about a sexual encounter with Luke Russell, or anyone else. Elizabeth lived a life of diligent loneliness, apparently. I kept encouraging her to get on, you know, Match.com, Nancy told them. But Elizabeth got badly hurt by the first marriage. Scared her off men for good, it looked like. I can’t believe she’s gone. I just can’t believe it.