“And handsome and charming and I drive a cool car.”
He saw her smile, but she quickly hid it. “You owe me big-time for not slapping you with a misdemeanor.”
“The paperwork wouldn’t be worth it.”
She hung up on him. For a moment he thought she really wasn’t going to let him through, but then a detective approached and said, “Mad Dog said you can go upstairs if you wear gloves, don’t touch anything, and stay out of her way.”
“Mad Dog?” Sean took the latex gloves the cop handed him.
The detective grinned. “She’s something else. Google her when you get home.”
Sean walked up the stairs to the third-floor apartment. He found Lucy in the bedroom with Andie Swann, the head ERT. They were cataloguing drawings.
Lucy had emailed him a heads-up about the shrine to Wade Barnett in Whitney’s bedroom, but he wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer volume of drawings, or the painting on the ceiling.
“A psychotic Michelangelo?” he said.
Lucy glanced over her shoulder. She was in her cool, professional mode. Her face was blank and serious, her eyes dark, intelligent, and observant. He’d seen her like this before. She closed off her emotions so completely she was almost like an android. He didn’t like it, even though he knew it was for self-preservation. He much preferred the Lucy who’d made love to him with heart and passion last night.
It was a sudden revelation, striking him as if God himself had put the knowledge in his head with the force of lightning. Lucy needed him to save her from herself. She wanted this life fighting the bad guys and saving the innocent, and she was so good at it, Sean would never expect her to walk away. But the violence, the intensity of the work, the inhumanity of the psychopaths she understood in ways even Hans Vigo couldn’t, would kill her spirit until she wasn’t able to shed the robotic shell she erected when she was working. He’d seen her shields go up in a fraction of a second, and it took hours-sometimes days-to bring them down.
In some ways, Lucy was a lot like his oldest brother. Sean barely knew Kane. A lifelong soldier, he’d been a mercenary in South America for at least the last fifteen years. He was hard as a rock, cold, and calculating. Sean never remembered him smiling or relaxing. He was always on alert, always at attention. He’d taken it upon himself and his team of dedicated men to rescue Americans kidnapped for ransom out of the country; he fought human trafficking in the trenches, sometimes as brutally as those who bought and sold human beings. If Kane had any humanity left, Sean hadn’t seen it, except in the cause he was fighting.
Lucy had that same capacity: to close herself off so completely, to shut down her own emotions, in order to do a job few people wanted and few people did well. Like Kane, she was a mercenary, but instead of doing it for money or a political cause, she did it for justice. She didn’t have to be in this killer’s obscene bedroom helping the FBI gather evidence that they hoped would lead to Whitney Morrissey’s capture. But Lucy was here because she could help. She wanted justice for the victims as much as she wanted Morrissey stopped simply because it was the right thing to do, and she had the skills to do it. And maybe deep down, she had to do it to give her past, and her future, purpose.
Sean had to provide her a wall of protection so she could let down her shields and be truly happy, truly free, when she wasn’t working. She needed to feel safe and loved every day, every night, so she could work these hard cases and not lose her empathy, or her humanity.
He walked behind her, touched her lightly on her back, kissed her hair. He looked at the sketchbook Andie and Lucy were going through. On the page was Wade Barnett, naked, being pulled by ugly witches with warts on their faces and boils on their backs.
“Well, and here I thought Whitney loved him in a sicko kind of way.”
Lucy shot him a glance. “Look at the faces.”
He did, repulsed by the realism; then he saw what Lucy meant. “That’s Jessica. And Kirsten. And Alanna-who are the others? There are nine.”
“When we show this to Wade Barnett, he’ll confirm that he slept with or had an online sexual relationship with all these women through the Party Girl site.”
“How long has she been stalking him?” Sean asked.
Andie said, “The first entry in her journal is dated two and a half years ago.”
“Whitney transferred from a small college in Connecticut to NYU,” Lucy said. “Her first day on campus she bumped into Wade coming out of her advisor’s office. She dropped her purse and he helped her pick everything up. She fixated on him.”
“Because he acted like a gentleman?”
“I need to go through her journal in more depth,” Lucy said, “but from what I read, she learned everything she could about him and his family. I don’t know when they actually started dating, but it was months, maybe a year, after that initial meeting. I doubt Wade even remembers it.”
“Why start killing these women now?”
“Before Alanna, Whitney didn’t personally know any of Wade’s girlfriends,” Lucy said, slipping into her psychoanalytic role so smoothly that it disturbed Sean. “Before Wade started sleeping with Whitney, she considered other women her competition. She would be prettier, more talented, kinder, not as clingy, more attentive-whatever it was she thought Wade wanted. Wade played around; he wasn’t serious about any of the women he slept with.”
Sean was distinctly uncomfortable, but he didn’t think Lucy noticed. He hoped she didn’t. Before he’d met her, he was a lot like Wade. Not the wild parties or drugs or cybersex, but Sean had a different girlfriend every couple of months. He broke the relationships off smoothly; in fact he was the master of easy splits. He didn’t want to look at that fact too closely; Lucy’s brother Patrick was right about his lack of commitment.
Lucy went on. “But after Wade became involved with Whitney, everything changed. Now it was her responsibility to make him happy. I’m sure Wade would agree with my assessment-Whitney was the perfect girlfriend at first. Too perfect. She would do anything he wanted, but because she is at her core insecure, she would need constant reassurance that he wanted to be with her. She wouldn’t trust him, so she would follow him. She would have caused at least one scene between Wade and another woman, and that’s likely when he realized she was obsessed. He wouldn’t have called her obsessed. He would have said she was clingy or demanding, but there would have been some public scene that had him breaking it off.”
“And she still followed him?”
“Yes. I don’t think there have been many days she hasn’t at least caught a brief glimpse of Wade. At some point, I’m betting while he was drunk, he slept with her again, giving her hope, convincing her that he truly loved her, but all the other women in his life were the problem. It was the faceless women that kept Wade from committing to her.”
“But Alanna was her cousin,” Andie said.
“And that was the stressor. I suspect that Whitney knew about the Party Girl website. She stalked him-she would have checked out his computer, read his email, probably knew the password for his voice mail and checked that regularly. But the women Wade had cybersex with weren’t real.”
“Because they were on the Internet,” Sean said.
“Right. They could have been anyone and anywhere. Whitney could make up fantasies about who they were, but they weren’t a direct threat to her.”
“I don’t understand how she knew the identities of the girls on Party Girl,” Andie said.
“If she had his passwords,” Lucy said, “it would have been easy to log into his profile and see everyone he chatted with.”
“But when did it turn physical?” Andie asked.
“We’ll have to ask Wade. Maybe he suggested to one or more of the girls that they come visit him in New York. We know from analyzing the patterns of sexual predators that they first work their victims online. Eventually, photos and videos don’t satisfy them and they escalate. Wade isn’t a rapist. I don’t see anything in his psyche that he was a predator
, but it’s the same escalation. Wade was no longer satisfied with cybersex, so he asked if they wanted to meet in person. Except for Kirsten, who was seventeen, they were all his peers, college-aged girls-no one gets hurt.”
The way Lucy said it, Sean knew she didn’t believe that no one was hurt in the sex games Wade and the others were playing.
“But throw in a psychopathic stalker fixated on Wade, and suddenly, everyone Wade slept with was at risk. For a while, Whitney could convince herself that Wade would come to his senses. She told herself that these girls were cruel to Wade. That they were ugly. That they wouldn’t satisfy him sexually. Whatever she needed to believe that justified why he was with them instead of her. She could even pretend they were someone else, maybe even her, because she didn’t know them personally.”
Lucy flipped through several pages of the sketchbook and stopped on one that was clearly Alanna Andrews. It was obvious to Sean that Lucy had known exactly where it was, probably remembered every image on the pages, and he wondered how long she’d been in here working.
“Alanna killed Whitney’s fantasy. Alanna was her cousin. Whitney brought her to parties, took her around New York, and I’d bet money that Alanna met Wade through Whitney. Alanna was Wade’s fantasy. She was just as sexually adventurous as he was, but she was a sweet person. She genuinely liked his handicapped brother. She stood up to Wade when he got out of line. He loved her, in his own way, but he wasn’t willing to give up his lifestyle. Alanna was young-they were both young-and neither realized that the parties they enjoyed were part of their problem. Wade didn’t see the difference between sleeping around and the rave orgies, and Alanna didn’t want to share.
“I suspect they were finding a way to get back together. According to Dennis, they were on-again/off-again. Whitney couldn’t let that happen. Her own cousin took Wade from her. Her flesh and blood stole from her. Alanna fit in with the Barnetts, but Whitney didn’t. The oldest brother, Charles, made that clear when he rescinded her art grant, proving in her mind that she wasn’t good enough. But Alanna was? How dare she take Whitney’s place as princess of the castle!”
Lucy spoke harshly, as if she knew exactly what Whitney was thinking. Then her voice went back to the well-modulated, cool analyst. “I don’t think Whitney planned to kill Alanna. She saw her at the party, and fought with her. Verbally, because there were no serious bruises on the body. She had her portfolio with her-that’s why she had the bag with the charcoal residue in it. I don’t know why she was carrying her portfolio. Maybe she was coming from a show, or going to draw at the party.” Lucy frowned, thinking. She turned to the end of the sketchpad. The images were starkly darker.
Sean said, “That looks like Wade underwater.” He reached over and turned to the page before it.
It was clearly Wade and Whitney, naked on a platform bed. Two wineglasses were spilling from their hands and their eyes were open, but blank, without detail.
“I think she was going to kill Wade that night,” Lucy said. “Murder-suicide, though she’d convince herself that it was a double suicide, that he would want to die with her.”
Andie cleared her throat. “Why didn’t she kill Wade? Why her cousin?”
“When she confronted Alanna, she saw hope. If she killed her, Wade wouldn’t have Alanna to love. In her warped mind, Whitney thought that if she took away the women Wade was screwing around with, he would come back to her.” She looked at Sean. “Did he tell you if he slept with Whitney after Alanna was murdered?”
Sean shook his head. “I didn’t ask.”
“I’ll need to analyze the journal more carefully because with psychotics like Whitney, we can’t trust everything they write,” Lucy said. “They are pathological liars. We need facts we can prove are true, and things we can prove are false, then send the journal to a handwriting expert to help weed through truth and fiction. But I think after Whitney killed Alanna, and no one suspected her, she went to Wade and they had sex. Maybe he was drunk, maybe she was convincing, I don’t know. But he realized he’d made a mistake, told her as much, and so she went on to kill Erica Ripley. That was premeditated. She probably followed her for weeks, found the right time, and suffocated her.”
“But then Wade didn’t sleep with her again,” Andie said.
“Right. I doubt he knew Erica was dead until days, weeks later. He’d have been sad, but not as upset as he was about Alanna. He ignored Whitney. They say there is a fine line between love and hate. She began to hate him and herself. The others, Heather and Jessica, she killed out of hate and blame. She blamed every woman who’d had sex with Wade-whether in person or online-and needed to destroy them. And because of his promiscuous lifestyle, she could go to the parties and see exactly who he was with.”
Andie sighed, exasperated. “What a piece of work. How do these people function? She sounds like such a raving lunatic that she’d have been caught long ago.”
“Psychopaths aren’t usually wide-eyed crazies you can point to on the street. It’s in their head, the way their brain is wired, or rewired,” Lucy said. “When we dig deep into Whitney’s background, I suspect we’ll find several instances of impulsive behavior, particularly in her preteen years. She was probably a serious kleptomaniac. Arrested for shoplifting, both little things like candy and expensive items like jewelry. She learned to channel her impulsive behavior into drawing, but never truly conquered it. She wants something, she takes it. She wanted Wade, she got him. But she couldn’t keep him like she can things, so she fell deeper into her psychosis.”
Sean said, “Wade denies knowing the last victim, Sierra Hinkle, and I couldn’t find her on the Party Girl site either.”
“She was a random choice. When Wade was arrested, Whitney couldn’t allow him to go to prison-she wouldn’t be able to see him anymore. She killed the first female she found outside alone. She waited by that bulldozer until someone came by.” Lucy turned to Andie. “Did you already send the journal down to your van?”
“No, it’s right here.”
Andie handed Lucy a leather-bound journal in a plastic bag. Lucy took it out and flipped through it, stopping in the middle. It wasn’t what was written so much as the quantity, line after line of small, perfectly slanted handwriting that seemed to blend together after a while.
“Just read one page,” she said to Sean. “I think you’ll understand her.”
“I’ll never understand people like that,” he said, but took the journal from Lucy.
Tuesday, August 17 Wade left his apartment at 8:36 this morning. He was wearing a white shirt. For lunch he went to Hooligan’s. His tight-ass brother was there, thinks he’s so noble and rich he acts like a fucking king. Wade went to the Yankees game with his retard brother. Wednesday, August 18 Wade went to the airport with his retard brother. I’m going to miss him so much I cried all night. Two weeks! I don’t know where he’s going, but I’ll find out. How could he leave me for two weeks? Thursday, August 19 I called Wade’s office and the bitch wouldn’t tell me where he was. I still have a key to his apartment. I went inside, and it smelled like him. I took off my clothes and laid naked in his bed. I put my face in his pillow and remembered when we fucked like rabbits in this bed. He said I was the best. No one turns him on like me. How could he walk away from me? I went to his computer and found his schedule. He took his pet retard to Vancouver, Canada! I can’t go, I don’t have a passport, why did he do this to me? I can’t live without him. I’m going to kill myself. He’ll be sorry then. Friday, August 20 I found videos of other girls on Wade’s computer. Alanna doesn’t satisfy him like I do, otherwise he wouldn’t be watching girls get off on dildos. I’ll get him back.
“She’s been writing in that book daily for over two years,” Lucy said.
“She threatened to kill herself,” Sean said.
“Turn to the last page.”
He did. Whitney’s last entry was dated yesterday.
It’s hopeless. He’ll never love me like I love him. I need to end this horror.
/>
“You think she killed herself?”
“Not yet. She won’t kill herself until Wade is dead.”
Suzanne stepped into the room. “What did you say?”
They all turned to face Suzanne.
“Wade’s in danger,” Lucy said. “It’s the subtext in the journal. She has several drawings in her sketchpad that show him dead or in pain. She’s murderous and suicidal.”
“I wish she’d just kill herself and save us all the headache,” Suzanne mumbled.
“You don’t mean that,” Lucy said.
Sean wasn’t so sure, but didn’t say anything.
Lucy added, “She killed Sierra Hinkle to get Wade out of prison so she can try to convince him to run away with her. If he refuses, she’ll kill him.”
Suzanne said, “He’s still in Rikers, and he’s not leaving until his arraignment tomorrow.”
“Rikers might be the safest place for him right now,” Lucy said.
“I doubt I can convince Wade or his attorney to keep him in prison. But I can put him into protective custody. I’ll put someone on his apartment, and we’ll escort him from Rikers to his home tomorrow. Tell him to stay put until we find Whitney.” Suzanne looked around the room, a pained expression on her face, then said, “Are you almost done in here?”
Andie said, “Thirty minutes.”
“Did you find the missing shoes?”
“No, but we found a raincoat with a missing button.”
Lucy said, “She took the shoes with her.”
“Why?”
“To show Wade before she kills him.”
Sean asked, “Why did she take the shoes to begin with?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “It was impulsive, it doesn’t make sense-they’re big, hard to conceal, and a direct connection to the victim. Forensics can easily pair up the shoes.”
“Maybe she planned on framing someone,” Suzanne suggested.
“Possibly.” Lucy frowned. “Except not consciously, because Alanna’s murder was impulsive and unplanned.”
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