Kill Again

by Neal Baer

  “Do we have enough evidence for a warrant?” Claire asked.

  “Not with two letters, though it’s gotta be him,” Wilkes replied. “I need to know everything about him.”

  “I really don’t know much,” Claire said. “Other than he participates in class.” She shook her head. “He was right there in front of me. I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, believe this,” Nick said, staring at Wilkes’s computer screen. “The bastard was the only child of parents who died in an early morning fire three years ago when Wesley was still an undergraduate.”

  “Cause of the fire?” Wilkes asked.

  “Inconclusive,” Nick replied, reading from the screen. “Possibly faulty wiring in the basement, though paint thinner might have been used as an accelerant. Wesley was questioned by the police in his hometown of River Edge, New Jersey, and had a solid alibi—he was asleep in his college dorm, forty miles away.”

  “Or not,” Claire said. “Wouldn’t be hard to sneak out in the middle of the night, get back in bed before anyone woke up.” She moved behind Nick, gazing over his shoulder. “Anything else come up?” Claire asked. “Trouble with the law when he was a kid? Complaints of cruelty to animals?”

  “We don’t need the triad to know this lunatic is a psycho,” Wilkes said, nodding. “I bet the sonuvabitch tortured animals, set fires, AND wet his bed as a kid.”

  “Don’t have that,” Nick said, his eyes still on the screen, “but one more thing popped up. He applied to the NYPD to become a police officer, but then dropped out just prior to his interview with the background investigator and department psychologist.”

  “It doesn’t prove he’s a serial killer,” Claire said, “but it’s no coincidence. He must have thought better of risking that fire would put him on the department shrink’s radar. He couldn’t take the chance he’d be caught.”

  “He’s our guy,” Wilkes said, “and we’re gonna collar him before he hurts anyone else.” He pulled out his cell phone. “I know a judge who will give us a warrant on the down-low—but we gotta keep this close to the vest. No one can know anything about this unless I personally approve.”

  “I’ll check Mr. Phelps’s class schedule,” Claire offered. “You can execute the warrant and search his place while he’s in class.”

  “And I’ll put someone on his tail to make sure he doesn’t come back and interrupt us,” added Nick.

  “Tony and Simms’ll sit on his apartment tonight,” Wilkes said. “I’m gonna get some undercover narco guys to tail him on campus tomorrow until we can pick him up legally and hold him.”

  He turned to Claire and took her hand. “This time we’re gonna get him,” Wilkes promised. “Before he hurts another soul.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Wesley Phelps emerged into the sunlight from his basement apartment on West Twenty-Fourth Street in Chelsea, his backpack slung over his shoulder, and headed west. It was a routine he followed nearly every morning, the short trek to the subway station at Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, where he’d catch a train uptown to school.

  He noticed the traffic on his street, always busy this time of the morning, was at a dead stop today. Swiveling his head from west to east, he saw the reason: a Con Edison crew, just feet from his building near Sixth Avenue, working out of an open manhole, their truck and equipment blocking half the street and leaving barely enough pavement for cars or trucks to squeak by.

  The blaring of a horn beside him made him jump. “Shut the hell up!” Wes screamed at the offender, a bald, heavy, middle-aged man behind the wheel of a gleaming, silver BMW. Smoke from the man’s fat stogie wafted out his open windows. But the schmuck also had his sound system on, loud enough to annoy almost anyone and drowning Wes out.

  Sometimes I wish I could just kill them all, he thought, moving past what he considered to be subhuman scum. Which, in truth, was his opinion of just about everyone but himself. He’d kill them again, and again, and again.

  But he knew resisting his impulse to do just that was what made him different from all the others, the obscure ones who came before him. The ones who weren’t as selective as he, who never had a plan. Hickman and Palmer. Their names would forever be remembered now. Because of him.

  As his would be as well. As soon as his life’s work was complete.

  Wes smiled, pleased with himself that he’d bided his time. Knowing it wouldn’t be long before all this would be over. The pain of his existence would be extinguished.

  Only then, finally, would he be able to rest.

  “He’s on the move,” the Con Ed worker said quietly into a hidden microphone somewhere under the yellow vest he wore over his work clothes, as he peered over the lip of the manhole at the figure walking away from him.

  “Did he make you?” came a gruff male voice through the earpiece in the man’s ear.

  As if on cue, the young man wheeled around, looking in the worker’s direction. Then he turned back and continued on his way.

  “He just looked in our direction but I don’t think so,” said the worker into the hidden mic. “He’s back on his way toward Seventh Avenue.”

  “Roger that,” came the voice in his ear. “Hold tight until I give the signal.”

  The worker twice clicked his mic, using a button hidden under his sleeve, to acknowledge his boss, who was as much his boss as he was a Con Ed maintenance crewman. In fact, he was an undercover operative with the Narcotics Division of the NYPD and had no idea what he was doing there. The only information he and his colleagues had been given was a photo of the subject and the surveillance location.

  None of them were even told the name of the subject or the voice in their ears, the great Oz behind the curtain of the Con Ed step van parked two yards away.

  “Where is he now?” Wilkes said into a radio mic as he hovered above a small desk in the rear of the Con Ed step van. Which didn’t, of course, even belong to Con Ed. The van was one of many undercover surveillance vehicles owned and operated by the police department, and Wilkes had requested this one in particular because of the hidden cameras on the outside and bank of monitors, radios, and laptops on the inside.

  “He just went down into the Eighth Avenue subway at Twenty-Third,” came a female voice over the speaker.

  Wilkes hit the Talk button on the mic. “Okay. Nobody moves until the bas—I mean subject is on a train.”

  He put the mic back on its hook and turned to Claire and Nick, who, like Wilkes, were decked out in Con Ed jumpsuits and work boots.

  “Was this really necessary?” Claire asked.

  “You wanted to walk the walk, Doc,” Wilkes shot back. “This is how the pros do it. Now we just need Tony to show up with the warrant and we’re good to go.”

  Tanisha Fuller, a pretty twenty-five-year-old African-American woman whose hair was secured in a bun, stood on the platform of the Eighth Avenue subway station, scanning the crowd. She was just about to turn toward the station’s other entrance when she noticed a dark-haired young man in a blue oxford shirt and khakis come through the turnstile just as a northbound train roared in, its brakes squealing as it came to a stop.

  Fuller watched as the young man boarded the train, and only when its doors were closed and wheels rolling did she glance at the photo on her cell phone to make sure she had the right person.

  She grabbed the radio mic clipped to the epaulet of her shirt and raised it to her lips. “Transit Seven David, your boy is locked and loaded and headed north. Third car from the front.”

  “Ten-four,” came Wilkes’s voice in her ear.

  Fuller clipped the mic back on her epaulet and walked toward the exit, shaking her head in amazement. She’d been planted here specifically for this purpose and went completely undetected by the dark-haired subject, whoever he was. Even she never thought she could work undercover hiding in plain sight wearing what she wore to work every day: the crisp new uniform of the rookie NYPD transit cop she was.

  The rear doors of the Con Ed step van flew ope
n, sending Wilkes, Nick, and Claire, in their coveralls and yellow hard hats, into the street. The inspector and Nick pulled their police shields, which hung by chains around their necks, out from under their shirts as they hurried up the stairs of Phelps’s brownstone, where Nick banged his fist on the door.

  “Police! Open up!” he shouted.

  Claire heard pounding footsteps and turned toward Sixth Avenue, from which Savarese, in the same Con Ed costume, ran toward them with papers in his hand.

  “Where the hell is he?” muttered Wilkes.

  The door opened, revealing a thin, white-haired, African-American man Nick estimated to be around seventy years old.

  “The hell is your problem?” said the man.

  “Police,” repeated Wilkes.

  “Yeah, no shit,” said the man. “What’s all the ruckus?”

  “Who manages this place?” asked Wilkes.

  “Norbert Miller,” said the man.

  “Where can we find him?”

  “You’re lookin’ at him, son,” Miller replied.

  Savarese, still breathless, handed Miller the paper. “This is a warrant to search the apartment of one Wesley Phelps, your tenant in the basement.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Miller exclaimed, “you really gonna make me do this?”

  “Yeah, and what’s it to you?” Wilkes demanded.

  “The guy’s nuts, that’s what,” complained Miller. “I went in there to fix a leak two months ago after that big rainstorm and I thought he was gonna stab me to death.”

  “Look,” Wilkes said, “we don’t have time for this. We need into his place, and now.”

  “But he’s got a clause in his lease requiring a day’s notice,” Miller pleaded.

  “Now. Or I gotta collar you for obstruction,” retorted Wilkes.

  “Yeah, swell. You gonna stick around till the sonuvabitch comes home and deal with him, because I sure ain’t.”

  “He ain’t gonna be your problem after today,” Wilkes assured him. “Now get the goddamned keys and let’s do this.”

  Wes emerged from the subway station with the sea of humanity spilling from underground up onto Columbus Circle. He stopped at his favorite food cart and bought the same breakfast he ate every morning: a plain bagel with cream cheese and a cup of black coffee.

  “Thanks, Samir,” he said to the West Indian vendor, handing him a dollar more than his food cost as a tip and bringing a smile from Samir.

  Wes felt good as he headed west on Fifthy-Ninth Street. He sunk his teeth into the bagel, taking a bigger bite than usual, quickly chewing it as he hurried to make the green light on Columbus Avenue.

  He was almost to the corner when he felt something vibrate in his pocket. He stopped, carefully placing his coffee and bagel on the roof of a parked car, and reached in his pocket for his phone.

  He knew whatever this was couldn’t be good. Because no one ever called Wesley Phelps. No one.

  One glance at the screen on the phone confirmed his worst fears.

  He removed the coffee and bagel from the car, flung them into a garbage can on the corner, and sprinted in the opposite direction on Fifty-Ninth Street, toward the subway station.

  Norbert Miller turned the key in the dead bolt above the knob on the door to Wes Phelps’s apartment. Or at least he tried to turn it.

  “What’s the problem?” Nick asked.

  “You can see what the problem is,” whined Miller. “I can’t turn the key in the goddamn lock.”

  “Are you sure it’s the right key?” asked Wilkes, ready to implode.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” said Miller. “Son of a gun musta changed the lock.” He smiled, exposing a mouthful of stained yellow teeth. “Finally, something I can evict him for. . . .”

  “Stand back,” Wilkes commanded him.

  “You gonna bust it down like on TV?” the manager asked.

  “Not if we don’t have to,” Nick said, pulling Miller aside, giving CSU detective Terry Aitken space to work his magic.

  “How long’s this gonna take?” Wilkes asked Aitken.

  “Lock’s nothing complicated,” responded Aitken as he removed a lock pick set from his bag and pulled out a curved pick, which he expertly inserted into the keyhole and tapped with his long fingers. The lock clicked and Aitken opened the door.

  “Nobody goes in without booties and gloves,” Wilkes ordered. “Doctor, we got a shower cap for your hair too,” he said. “I don’t want this guy knowing we were here.”

  Wesley was breathing heavily as he reached the subway station, choosing the stairs over the escalator and descending two steps at a time, pulling his MetroCard from his pocket and trying not to go tumbling forward.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and glanced in every direction. Nothing to be worried about. Everyone seemed to be moving at a normal pace, nothing out of the ordinary.

  He heard a noise behind him. From up the stairs. A woman yelling “Watch out, assholes!”

  He wheeled. Two young men, around his age, backpacks on their backs, were flying down the stairs. Toward him. Their eyes on him. Their hands reaching under their shirts.

  Wesley was prepared for this.

  He slipped off his backpack, reached inside, and pulled out the nine-millimeter Browning he’d bought for just such an emergency. He grabbed a middle-aged commuter just about to pass him, his arm around her waist, and spun her in front of him.

  His human shield. To protect him from what was about to happen.

  “Police!” shouted the two young men on the stairs, their guns now in their hands. “Everybody down!” they screamed.

  Wes began firing. Again and again and again. Hitting everyone between him and the two cops, who couldn’t shoot at Wes lest they hit his hostage.

  He smiled as they stumbled over the bodies below them on the stairs.

  “Don’t you move! Don’t you move, asshole!” they both screamed at him.

  Wes looked up at them, just feet away now, and shot each of them in the head.

  His hostage screamed. “You monster! What’s the matter, your mama didn’t love you enough? Let me go! Let me go!”

  Wes let her go, and before she could scream again, fired one right through her left eye, Moe Greene-style. “My mother put her cigarettes out on my back, bitch,” he said to the woman as she dropped. He stuck the gun in his belt as he ran through the subway station and disappeared.

  Booties, gloves, and shower cap on, Claire stepped inside Wesley Phelps’s small, immaculate apartment.

  What she saw took her breath away.

  “My God,” she said.

  She was staring at a giant crossword puzzle, painted on the wall, each of Phelps’s victim’s names entered into the interlocking squares: Nick. Jill. Katie. Rosa Sanchez. Robert Newman. Victor Palmer. Jonah Welch. Though not a victim, the psychopath Phelps admired who drained the blood of his victim in the 1920s, William Edward Hickman, had his name up there too. Other words, such as blood, corpse, disembody, and decapitate, also filled the giant squares.

  “There’s only twelve blanks left,” she said to nobody, stunned.

  “Claire,” Nick said from behind her.

  She turned and gasped at what she saw on the opposite wall: the anagrams. Dozens of pairs of words, neatly printed in red, beginning with infections poacher, octopi enfranchise, and Pinocchio fastener. Above the list, the words GATHER STAMINA were written in yellow Magic Marker and outlined in brown. The bare bulb that lit the perfectly square room made the letters sparkle like gold.

  Claire moved toward that wall, drawn to examine Wesley’s intricate and precise work, almost mesmerized. “It’s brilliant in its own way,” she said.

  “To you maybe, Doc,” Wilkes said. “To me he’s just another psycho.”

  Claire turned to Nick, as if waiting for his reaction. “He’s obsessed with perfection and that’s what he’s going for,” Claire said. “That’s what this sick game is all about.”

  “Gather stamina? The hell does that mean?” as
ked Wilkes, just as horrified as Claire and Nick.

  “Those letters rearranged spell the Anagramist,” Claire replied.

  Wilkes caught on, staring at the anagrams. “And those other words rearranged spell perfection in chaos?”

  “Not all of them,” Claire realized, the horror building as she focused on two pairs of words written in block letters and red marker: ALKALI GIN and ARTERIES CLAW.

  Nick and Wilkes joined her, their faces grim, Nick’s arm slipping around her. “Alkali gin rearranged spells kill again,” he said.

  His warmth gave Claire the strength to say the words. “Arteries claw is an anagram for my name.”

  “He is obsessed with you, Doc,” said Aitken from across the room, approaching them holding a scrapbook in his gloved hands. “Check this out.”

  He opened the book and Claire gasped again. On the first page was a newspaper clipping. Photos of her and Nick, over a headline: DETECTIVE AND PSYCHIATRIST TEAM FINDS KILLER, the story underneath an account of the case that had brought them together a year and a half earlier. Claire felt sicker and sicker as Aitken turned the pages, filled with photos of her taken with a telephoto lens: On the street. Entering the hospital. Leaving her apartment. With Nick, outside his apartment.

  “How did we miss seeing him?” she asked Nick.

  “Speak for yourself,” Nick replied. “At least I have an excuse.”

  “It’s like he wanted to be me,” Claire said, staring at a close-up of her face beside another newspaper article lauding her skill at solving her best friend, Amy’s, murder. “But he was also obsessed with serial killers. He took the profiling course I coteach, not because he wanted to catch them, but because he wanted to be them.”

  “And then he took a left turn,” Nick added. “The guy is all about perfection, and he found the perfect person to learn from. He fixated on you.”