Kill Again

by Neal Baer

  “What did happen, Mom?”

  “Well, you know how he goes to the gym at the butt crack of dawn.”

  Get to the point. “Mom, please—”

  “He was on East Avenue at Culver Road and he had the green light—all the witnesses say so. But a city bus sped right through the red light on Culver and hit him broadside.”

  Claire was confused. “Witnesses? At five-thirty in the morning?”

  “Thank God your father saw the thing coming at the last second and hit the gas so it only clipped him in the rear and he spun into a telephone pole.”

  Claire was having trouble understanding her mother. “Slow down, Mom, not all at once. Was the bus driver drunk or something?”

  “They don’t know who was driving,” came her mother’s answer.

  “You’re not making sense, Mom.”

  “None of this makes sense!” cried her mother through the phone. “All anyone’s saying is that the bus was stolen.”

  “Wow,” said Claire, pulling a small suitcase from the closet and throwing it on the bed. The thought of anything happening to her father was ... well, unthinkable. But she had to keep it together for her mother’s sake.

  “Well, at least Dad’s okay. Can I talk to him?”

  “They’re doing one last test, I think it’s a CAT scan. As soon as he’s back down here I’ll have him call you. They don’t let you use cell phones in here, you know.”

  Claire couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “I know. I’m a doctor, Mom, remember?”

  Her mother laughed nervously on the other end. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “It’s been a long morning.”

  “I can imagine,” said Claire.

  “What am I hearing in your voice?”

  Claire was shocked her mother could detect the fear she felt. “It’s just that . . . I had this really strong urge that I should call you and Dad last night.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I was up for nearly two days straight and once I hit the bed I was out.”

  “Don’t worry about it, dear,” said her mother as soothingly as possible. “He’ll be fine. Where will you be later?”

  Claire eyed the still empty suitcase on her bed and made a decision. “At work, Mom,” she said, omitting the fact that today work would be at One Police Plaza with Nick and the detectives. “And as long as you’re swearing to me on a stack of Bibles that Dad’s okay, I should get going. Just promise you’ll put him on the phone with me as soon as he’s back. I want to hear his voice.”

  “I promise.”

  “If I don’t hear from you in two hours I’m calling you back.”

  “I swear on a stack of Bibles.”

  They said their good-byes and hung up. Claire threw the suitcase back into the closet, showered, dressed in dark blue slacks, tan blouse, gray blazer, and flats. Forgoing breakfast, she hurried downstairs and outside under overcast skies, around the corner to where she’d left Nick’s Jeep the night before.

  The Jeep was gone, a Volkswagen Beetle in its place.

  Take a breath. You were exhausted last night. Are you sure this is where you parked it?

  Her eyes scanned every direction until they landed on the streetlamp that had illuminated her image last night in the window of the Jeep. She pivoted around to check the parking signs for the block, confirming she’d parked legally and there was no reason for the Jeep to have been towed.

  “Hey, lady!” came a male voice.

  She wheeled around. A doorman from the nearest building was looking at her. “You lost or something?” the young man said.

  “I think my car was stolen,” Claire answered, pointing at the spot. “I mean, my friend’s car. That’s where I left it last night.”

  “What kind of car was it?”

  “Red Jeep Cherokee. The old, boxy style, from the eighties.”

  “Can’t say I saw it since I been here,” said the doorman in thick Brooklynese. “Guess you better call the cops. Wish I could help you.”

  An idea popped into Claire’s head. “Maybe you can,” she said. “Does your building have any security cameras pointed at the sidewalk here?”

  “Does it? You’d think the effin’ CIA was in this place, all the cameras they got here. Wanna check out the video?”

  “I probably sound like I’m insane, but please, yes.”

  The doorman, who introduced himself as Carl from Canarsie, said he’d show her as soon as he could get someone to cover for him. Claire called Nick, dreading telling him his car was gone, gratified when he told her not to worry about it.

  “Just hang in,” Nick said over the phone. “I’ll grab a cab and get right over.”

  Right over turned out to be half an hour later because of traffic, which worked out fine because it took that long for Carl the doorman to find someone to spell him.

  “At least I’m not crazy,” said Claire, Nick beside her. Carl played the security video on a small monitor in a tiny room behind the apartment building’s front desk.

  “I never thought you were,” Nick replied, feeling more like his old self today.

  She suppressed the urge to ask how he was, knowing he’d only say he was fine. She turned her attention to the monitor, on which they could clearly see Claire check her reflection in the car window.

  “You on your way to a date or something?” Nick asked with a grin.

  Claire didn’t even hear him. “Who’s that?” she asked, staring at the screen, on which a man wearing dark colors and a wide-brimmed hat obscuring his face approached the Jeep. Without hesitation, the man produced a Slim Jim from inside his coat, slid it between the driver’s window and the door, pulled it up, and popped the lock. He got in, reached under the dash, appeared to insert a key in the ignition, and pulled away with the headlights off. The whole thing took no more than twenty seconds.

  “Jeez, the guy’s a pro,” said Carl.

  Claire hit pause, freezing the image of the Jeep in the middle of the street. Nick turned dead serious. “Go get your boss, Carl. I need this DVD. It’s evidence in a crime.”

  “Sure, Detective,” said Carl, muttering, “Crime of the century, hot-wiring a beat-up piece of crap,” as he left the room.

  “Carl’s closer to the truth than he thinks,” Nick said.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Claire. “I thought parts for old cars are worth a fortune in third-world countries.”

  “Not for my car, as far as I know,” Nick replied. “He didn’t hot-wire it either. He found the spare key I keep taped under the dash.”

  “To the car? You said you keep house keys under the seat.”

  “My house keys aren’t the only ones I keep losing. I taped the car key to the steering column so I’d always have another one handy.”

  Claire gestured to the monitor. “This guy found it like he put it there himself.”

  A dark thought popped into Claire’s head. “He showed up right after I left. Like he was waiting for me.”

  Nick already knew this. “I can’t disagree with you,” he said. “If that’s the case, he’d have to know you were driving my car and tailed you.”

  “Or he’s been watching my building,” she said.

  Neither option thrilled them. “Let’s not jump off a bridge here,” Nick cautioned. “We’ve got bigger fish on our plate.”

  “What do we do about this DVD?” asked Claire.

  “I’ll call the local precinct, have an Evidence Collection cop keep an eye on it here until the legalities are hammered out. In the meantime, we need to get to the office.”

  “The commissioner would appreciate us collaring this sick sonuvabitch sometime in the next two weeks, before he retires,” Wilkes said to the roomful of detectives gathered around him in the Major Case Squad office. Now that the copycat murders were public knowledge, there was no need to keep the number of cops involved to a minimum. As of now, the force hunting the Anagramist (whose self-proclaimed moniker was withheld from the press) was nineteen de
tectives strong.

  “Finding this whacko is priority one for the job,” Wilkes continued, “and that comes right from the fifteenth floor. We’ve been given the keys to the kingdom on this one. Unlimited resources. All we gotta do is ask and we shall receive,” he said in his best princely manner, which for him was a stretch. “And we’re gonna need all of it,” Wilkes added, “because, unfortunately for us, the only physical evidence we have on this mook is the way he cut up Rosa Sanchez. Nothing whatsoever’s been found to identify him—prints, DNA, not a goddamn thing. No car, no tracks, tire or otherwise, no nothing. This guy’s not just lucky; he’s good. And the fact that his MO keeps changing is just the gravy on this pile of dog crap, because we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  Behind the somber, attentive detectives stood Claire, her back against the wall. She was up next. And she was nervous. At least at the news conference she didn’t have to speak.

  “What we’re looking for, people, is a ghost,” Wilkes said, soldiering on. “We all know how hard it is to find ghosts. And now that we’ve exposed ourselves on television, he knows we’re on to him. So make no mistake about it, we’re playing catch-up here. It’s time for us to pull ahead in this guy’s sick little game.”

  He gave Claire the signal, and she walked to the front of the room. “I don’t know how many of you have met Doctor Claire Waters, but she has been indispensable in this case, and she’s working with us in an official capacity to help collar this maniac. She’s worked up a profile for which the city isn’t paying her a dime—not that she’s asking. I give you Doctor Waters.”

  Claire reached the front of the room. She wasn’t prepared for the spontaneous, thunderous applause that came from the detectives. She could feel her face flush with embarrassment and had no clue how to react. Wilkes saw her predicament and came to her rescue.

  “All right, you morons,” he yelled above the applause, “try not to make the doc here wet her pants.” Over their laughter, he said to Claire, “You have some fans here and you’ve earned every one of them.”

  Claire squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Thank you, Inspector. I’m touched.”

  “So’s he,” came an unfamiliar voice from the back, which broke everyone up once again and relaxed Claire to the point that she felt ready to proceed in this roomful of seasoned cops.

  “Okay,” she said as the laughter died down. “Be glad you’re laughing now, because I don’t think our friend the Anagramist is going to be easy to catch.”

  She made eye contact around the room, and the looks she got back confirmed she had their attention. “Our killer is a student—of serial killers—and obscure ones at that. Other than myself, who studied William Edward Hickman in Serial Killers 101 (this drew a laugh), I doubt any of you ever heard of him. But to keep it short, Hickman murdered a little girl in Los Angeles back in the twenties and drained her blood,” Claire said to the group. “Just like our killer tried to do to a man we haven’t ID’d yet who was found dead in Queens after an attack similar to what Hickman did to that girl.”

  “What about Victor Palmer, Doc?” asked Savarese. “We didn’t know he was dismembering women until recently, so how could the Anagramist know about him?”

  “Unless he knew Palmer, there’s no way he could have,” Claire agreed. “Most likely, he just pulled up another grisly murder from the Internet. Got the information about the two killings from 1977 and copied them.”

  “And the murder of Rosa Sanchez put us back on the trail of Victor Palmer,” Nick said, standing off to the side. “At first we thought Palmer killed Rosa, but then we realized that the Anagramist just made it look like Palmer’s work. In a perverse way, we have the Anagramist to thank for helping us smoke out and nail Palmer.”

  “And don’t forget that the Anagramist is a master copier. Not only does he copy old serial murders, he impersonates cops,” Claire said. “It’s how he lured Rosa Sanchez into going with him.”

  “Shit,” Wilkes said. “Tony, put two guys on tracing whatever hunk of metal the Anagramist has that looks like a parole officer’s shield. Any idiot calling themselves a collector can buy them off several Web sites. Let’s get on that and the local police supply stores and manufacturers who make our shields.”

  He gestured to Claire, giving her back the room. “Now, as you might’ve seen last night, the inspector gave a great performance on television. But he stuck to the script we prepared for him. The script was designed to push our target’s buttons and, we hope, cause him to make a mistake. It’s probably too early to tell whether it worked. When the inspector called him an amateur, it was intended to go to the Anagramist’s severe lack of self-esteem. He’s looking for a way to feel good about himself, but he’s having a tough time, especially now that we’ve called him out. He admires and copies the work of his predecessors, serial killers who came before him. I’m assuming he’s picking the obscure ones because he can’t think up his own methods or anything more creative than what he’s already seen. It’s like plagiarism or art fraud. He’s a wannabe. But he’s probably congratulating himself on his brilliance by copying the unknown masters, thinking he can do it better.”

  “Has anyone done this before?” asked a female voice from the back.

  “Not as a deliberate MO,” said Claire. “As far as we can tell, anyway. There are plenty of murders where someone wants to get rid of their wife, girlfriend, or business partner, and kills in a way to make it look like the work of an active, current, serial killer. But I know of no cases like this.”

  “What about the word games?” asked Nick. “Why does he need them?”

  “The fact that he’s given himself a name—the Anagramist—suggests he wants more than just credit,” Claire said. “He wants fame, the front page, the lead story on the six o’clock news, the top headline of the Web site. A lot like David Berkowitz when the Daily News started calling him Son of Sam.”

  Wilkes shouted to Savarese, “Maybe our guy’s a disciple of Berkowitz. Someone who did time with him in prison, got paroled, and decided he wanted to be more famous. Let’s get two bodies up to Fallsburg and talk to Dave Berkowitz. He found God a long time ago, so he’ll probably cooperate. Ask him if there’s anyone who seemed to deify him a little too much. Go on, Doctor.”

  “I’m almost done, Inspector,” Claire said. “One last thing about the word games, and this is perhaps the most important point. People like our target often compensate for their poor self-image by convincing themselves that they’re smarter than the rest of us. Please don’t take what I’m about to say as an insult, but such an individual would believe a bunch of ‘moronic cops’—and I’m using his words, not mine—would never be able to figure out his anagrams.”

  “Maybe he’s right,” Wilkes said, “because we didn’t figure it out. You did.”

  Claire didn’t want to end the briefing on such a note. “But you were smart enough to call me, Inspector,” she said, getting the laugh she hoped for and turning Wilkes’s face red. “Isn’t that good enough?”

  Wilkes wasn’t too proud to be the butt of someone’s well-timed joke. “The Doctor will be appearing at the Improv after we close this thing,” he said. “You all have your assignments. We’ll work two twelve-hour tours—midnight to noon and noon to midnight—with some flexibility for whatever may come up. Now let’s get to it and collar this colossal pain in the city’s ass.”

  Claire was glad there was no more applause before the briefing broke up. Most of the detectives shuffled out, but one stayed in his seat—Billy Simms. The handsome, young detective had been on the phone throughout the entire briefing. Only now did he hang up and give Wilkes the high sign.

  “What is it, Billy?” Wilkes asked, hurrying over.

  “We got an ID on the dude in Alley Pond Park, Boss,” Simms said.

  Wilkes summoned Nick and Claire over for Simms to fill them in. “His name’s Robert Steven Newman, forty-three, of Spring Lake, New Jersey,” he said as he pulled up Newman’s
driver’s license on his computer. A handsome, dark-haired man in a gray suit and conservative red tie occupied the screen.

  “Ain’t that special,” muttered Wilkes. “How’d he get from the shore to the swamps of Little Neck?”

  “Good question, because the last time anyone saw him was three mornings ago, getting into his canary-yellow 2008 Porsche convertible outside Monmouth County Superior Court and driving away.”

  “Superior court?” asked Nick. “We know what for?”

  “Jersey troopers say he’s a personal injury lawyer and part-time public defender who was there to get one of his private cases adjourned. Newman’s wife called the cops when he didn’t show up at home that night. They had a statewide bulletin on him and his ride.”

  “Get that bulletin out to our troops, and all the cops on Long Island, including state,” ordered Wilkes. “Canary yellow Porsche . . . we may actually have a shot someone’ll spot it—”

  “Someone already did,” Simms said. “Yesterday, in the parking lot of the Atlantic City airport.”

  “And I’m gonna guess there’s no record the poor bastard got on a plane or even bought a ticket,” Wilkes said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Fantastic. First person figures out how this poor slob got from Atlantic City to a swamp in Queens without his car, I’ll put ’em up for promotion.” It was clear the case was getting to him. “Guess we’d better put a coupla bodies on Newman, see if anyone in his past or present figures into this.”

  “Cops in Jersey are on it,” offered Simms.

  “Well, I want our cops on it with them,” Wilkes interrupted.

  “Nick,” shouted a detective named Stark from across the room. “Line three.”

  “Can you take a message?” Nick asked.

  “It’s your kid’s school,” said Detective Stark, “and it sounds urgent.”

  Nick found the nearest phone and yanked up the receiver. “This is Detective Lawler,” he said.

  “Hi, Detective, this is Dawn Frandon. I’m the assistant principal at—”

  “I know who you are, Ms. Frandon,” Nick said, remembering the woman from his daughter Jill’s high school. She’d been very helpful in the weeks after his wife committed suicide. “Is everything okay with Jill?”