by Neal Baer
“You too, eventually,” Claire said. “He had to prove to himself he was smarter than us, that he could involve me in his sick little game. That’s why he went after Rosa.”
“He had to beat you,” said Nick. “That was his perfection in a chaotic world.”
“Boss!” Savarese’s voice boomed from outside the apartment. “Intelligence is calling a code at Columbus Circle!”
“Shit,” exclaimed Wilkes, hurrying for the door as Claire turned to Nick.
“What now?” she asked.
“It means there’s either been a valid terror threat or actual attack,” said Nick, following Wilkes out to the street.
“What the hell, Tony?” demanded Wilkes.
“A dozen bodies in the Columbus Circle subway station,” Savarese exhaled. “Transit says two of them were the narco guys we had on Phelps.”
“Phelps is in class right now, goddamn it,” bellowed Wilkes.
“I know he’s supposed to be, Boss,” blurted Savarese, “but the description headquarters has on the radio of the subway shooter sure as hell sounds like our boy.”
“He knew we were here,” Claire realized, running back into the apartment.
“Claire!” yelled Nick, going after her.
“You’re contaminating the scene, Doctor!” screamed Wilkes, following them in to find Claire and Nick scanning the room. “The hell are you two looking for?”
“Cameras,” said Claire, pointing to a tiny hole in the ceiling near one corner of the small apartment. “Get someone up there on a ladder, Inspector, and I’ll bet there’s one right there.”
Aitken was checking the door. “There’s something here too,” he shouted.
Nick hurried over. “What is it?” he asked.
The CSU detective pointed to small, round pieces of metal imbedded in the side of the door and the doorway at the same height. “Contacts,” he said. “He’s got the place wired. I’ll check the computer, but if I had to guess, he sets the alarm when he leaves and if someone opens the door he gets notified on his cell phone.”
“And activates that camera,” Wilkes said, glancing back at the tiny hole. “The bastard’s streaming us on his phone.”
He turned to Claire. “Okay, Doc. This is where the rubber meets the road. Where would he go?”
“He’s not going anywhere, Inspector,” she answered. “Until he finishes his puzzle.”
“No way he’s coming back here,” declared Nick.
“It doesn’t have to be here,” retorted Claire. “He’s gonna finish his masterwork no matter what.”
Nick knew what that meant. “He’s going after us. The girls—”
“Tony,” shouted Wilkes. “Get ESU over to IS Twenty-seven and Stuyvesant High, full squads on each, and get Nicky’s two girls outta there!”
“On it, Boss,” Savarese bellowed, stepping out to the street.
“As for you two . . .” said Wilkes, turning to Nick and Claire.
“We need to get the scene processed,” Nick protested, knowing what was coming.
“The hell you do,” retorted Wilkes. “He knows you’re here and we’re not taking any chances. I’m having your protective details bring you both back to Nick’s apartment.”
“Inspector—” Claire began.
“Save it, Doc,” Wilkes interrupted. “We’re locking this place down and getting the hell outta here. ESU’ll bring the girls home and that’s where you’re all staying until Phelps is either in jail or the morgue.”
“If he murdered a dozen people including two cops, he’s not gonna let us lock him up,” Nick said.
“Whatever,” Wilkes replied. “Dead or alive. I’ll take him either way.”
“They have Katie,” Claire shouted, hanging up the landline phone in Nick’s kitchen and heading out to the living room where he sat on the couch.
“How long before they’re here?” he asked.
Claire sat next to him. “Tony says the Emergency Service team bringing her back is going to meet up with the team that got Jill from Stuyvesant. With traffic they’re thinking a half hour to forty-five minutes.”
“Sounds about right,” Nick said, still bothered.
Claire rubbed his back. “Relax, Nick,” she said, trying to comfort him. “They’re surrounded by cops with machine guns. Nothing’s going to happen to them.”
“It’s not that,” Nick confessed. “The whole thing is just wrong. Phelps is out there and we’re locked up here in our own prison.”
“Let me make you some breakfast,” Claire said, kissing him on the cheek and getting up.
Nick got up and followed her in to find her pulling an old cast iron skillet from a cabinet next to the stove.
“I can help you if you want,” he offered.
Claire lifted her head out of the now open refrigerator. “You want to help me, go down to D’Agostino’s and get me a dozen eggs.”
“I’m not supposed to leave, remember?” Nick reminded her.
“Your boss isn’t gonna suspend you for going to the supermarket,” she chided. He glared at her. “As long as you take one of our machine-gun-toting soldiers with you.”
The logic was hard for Nick to argue with. “I guess,” he said, giving in.
“You won’t regret it,” Claire promised him. “If you’re not back in twenty minutes, I’m calling the cops.”
“Good luck with that,” Nick said, heading for the door. “There’s never a cop around when you need one.”
The apartment was quiet but for the crackling sound of olive oil heating in the skillet on the stove. Claire put down the sharp knife she’d used to cut the fresh cloves of garlic she was about to sauté for the omelette she knew that Nick loved. She scattered the garlic into the heated oil, turned the burner down to medium, and took the remaining garlic back to the refrigerator.
She was about to open its door when she stopped to look at a photo of Nick with the girls, arm-in-arm ice-skating at Central Park’s Wollman Rink, attached with a heart-shaped magnet that read Happy Father’s Day, Love, Jill & Katie.
Father’s Day, Claire thought. I’d give anything to spend next Father’s Day with Nick and the girls.
“Beautiful family,” a voice said behind her. She froze, knowing it wasn’t Nick’s voice. “Hello, Claire,” the voice continued.
Claire wheeled. Wesley Phelps stood six feet away, a warm smile on his face and a very large gun in his hand. She fought to remain calm despite her terror.
“I didn’t know we were on a first-name basis, Wesley,” she said.
“Sure we are,” Wes replied. “A girl doesn’t go to a guy’s place like you did and call him by his last name. That wouldn’t be proper.”
“There’s two cops outside with machine guns, Wesley,” Claire warned him.
“Not anymore there aren’t,” he said.
“There’s no way you could’ve gotten past them,” she said.
“Oh, Mrs. Kerner across the hall took care of them for me,” he boasted. “She got them into her apartment and I took care of the rest. They never saw it coming.”
“How did you get into Mrs. Kerner’s—”
“She was a nice old lady. She let me right in the window when I came down the fire escape and said someone was chasing me. And then she went out and got the cops. Easy, peasy.”
Claire felt herself starting to shake and did the best she could to suppress it. “I can help you, Wesley. I know a lot more about what must be going on with you emotionally now.”
“So now you wanna help me?” he retorted. “After all those things you said about how sick and twisted I am? When you trespassed on my property? Went through my life?”
“Not before you invaded mine,” Claire shot back. “I saw your little scrapbook.”
“I’m offended, Claire,” he said. “I thought you’d be flattered that someone was finally paying some attention to you. After what happened to your fiancé last year . . .”
“I have someone, Wesley,” she declared.
> “I know, but is that what you really want for yourself?” he asked. “I mean, come on. Why would you hook up with a guy who’s not even gonna be able to enjoy the sight of you much longer?”
“He’ll be back here any minute,” Claire threatened.
“Oh, I know,” snapped Phelps. “And the girls too. I’m counting on it.”
She ran for the stove, grabbed the skillet, and flung it at him. The sizzling oil splashed him in the face, temporarily blinding him. He dropped the gun and grabbed his head in pain.
“You bitch!” he screamed, lunging for Claire, hooking his arm around her throat before she could grab the knife on the counter. He squeezed her neck with such force that she started losing consciousness.
“I don’t have to complete my puzzle in order,” he said as the life drained from her face. “I’ll finish you and then Nicky and the girls when they get back.”
Boom! A bullet ripped through Phelps’s right calf. He released Claire and used that arm to grab onto the counter, screaming in agony.
Claire fell to the ground with him, facing the kitchen doorway where Nick stood with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
“Every Tuesday at nine o’clock since I was a kid, Mrs. Kerner went to the hairdresser next to the supermarket. Never missed a day. But when I didn’t see her in there today—”
“You shot me, you prick!” Wesley cried, holding his shattered leg.
“Devil’s in the details, Wes,” Nick said, advancing. He picked up Phelps’s gun from the floor and pointed both weapons at him as Claire crawled past him.
“I didn’t finish my puzzle!” he screamed.
“You screwed up, asshole,” Nick said. “You’re not the smartest guy in the room. You got beat by a woman and a cop. How’s that feel?”
“I’m not beat yet,” the killer cried, flinging something at Nick.
Boom! Nick fired, hitting him in the left shoulder but too late to stop him. The paring knife Phelps flung penetrated Nick’s stomach.
“Nick!” Claire cried.
A fast-spreading bloodstain appeared on Nick’s shirt around the protruding knife. He coughed, still on his feet but stunned, and dropped the assault rifle. Phelps launched himself toward the weapon.
“Who’s the one who screwed up now, lover boy?” Phelps taunted him.
Crack! A bullet tore through Phelps’s side. He started to cough up blood as he looked up to see Claire, her hands around Nick’s right hand, pointing Wesley’s own Browning at him. Her finger was still on the trigger.
And he smiled.
“Help him,” Nick said to her.
Claire released her grip on his hand holding Phelps’s gun. “But you’re—”
“Blade isn’t long enough to do any real damage,” he said. “Don’t let him die.”
She scrambled to her feet, grabbed a dish towel, and knelt beside Phelps, now ashen, blood seeping from his wound. She tried to staunch the bleeding but he pushed her away with his last ounce of strength.
“You’re strong,” he gasped. “You’re not a parasite. You’re perfection in chaos.”
Wesley closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 25
Claire had never kept a journal. She’d always resisted writing down her feelings because she didn’t want to acknowledge them. Once she put them down on paper, they became real; they existed in black and white; they couldn’t be ignored.
After Wesley Phelps died, Claire decided it was time to see her thoughts and feelings on the page, to commit them to paper as a way to work through her own trauma and understand this horribly disturbed young man. She found the perfect notebook at a small stationery store. It had blank pages (she didn’t want lines; she preferred a white, open canvas) that were bound in exotic purple batik cloth, dotted with bursts of bright orange, hot yellow, and Day-Glo green. The cover reminded her of a brainbow—the multicolored imaging that used fluorescent dyes to highlight the brain’s wiry neurons, which she made as a graduate student. She knew she’d feel comfortable writing down her thoughts in what she called her “brain book.”
October 8—Entry Number One
Wesley Phelps.
Who was he?
Wesley was born January 5, 1986, in Morristown, New
Jersey, to Ray and Ellen Phelps. An only child, he had no significant illnesses or hospitalizations and no criminal record. Parents are deceased (perished in a house fire while Wesley was in college). Only living relative is Susan Lantz, Wesley’s maternal aunt and older sister of his mother. Ms. Lantz reports that Wesley did not inherit any money after his parents’ death because they were concerned about his “odd” behavior. When pressed, Ms. Lantz recalled that Wesley never could keep a pet—dogs and cats all “ran away.” But Ray Phelps was putting in a vegetable garden several years ago and dug up dozens of animal bones. No one could prove they were Wesley’s “lost” pets, but Ellen Phelps confided to her sister that she was concerned that Wesley may have also killed the neighbors’ pets that had disappeared over the years.
Mr. and Mrs. Phelps placed their money for Wesley in a trust, with Ms. Lantz as the executor. They gave her explicit instructions that Wesley’s college and graduate school tuition and expenses should be paid, and he was to receive a monthly stipend of $2,000. But under no circumstances was he to gain access to his sizable inheritance until he was thirty-five and had undergone a thorough psychiatric assessment attesting to his competence. If he was found to be mentally ill, or as Ms. Lantz put it, “a really sick puppy,” the inheritance was to be donated to the Dumb Friends League.
Ms. Lantz reports that Wesley did not take this well, that his behavior scared her when the will was read. Instead of becoming angry, he giggled and stared at her, shaking his head. She hasn’t seen him since.
She is devastated by her nephew’s actions and blames herself for not seeing the “evil in his heart.” She adds that she always thought Wesley was “a screwy kid,” that he’d laugh inappropriately whenever someone got hurt. She suspects that Wesley tried to kill her after his parents died. She was in a terrible car accident two months later when the brakes failed on her new Honda.
Walt McClure, Wesley’s professor, reports that his student “wanted to be the best.” He told Professor McClure that he “admired” my accomplishments and hoped that he could do well enough in the master’s program in forensic sciences to help him get into medical school. McClure also reports that when I started teaching his course, Wesley told him he wanted to become a forensic psychiatrist and hoped to “shadow me,” and learn everything I could teach him.
Wesley admired serial killers to the extent that he copied their crimes in almost perfect detail. In a sense, I believe these killers are his alter egos. These psychopaths gained a massive amount of attention for their shocking crimes. Wesley craved that attention and modeled himself after them, but thought he’d go one better and never get caught. He believed that if he could stump me, and get away with these crimes, that he would find “perfection in chaos.”
Perhaps Wesley suffered from schizophrenia. I don’t know if he had auditory or visual hallucinations but he certainly appeared paranoid. His deep identification with other serial killers suggests he may have actually thought he was a famous serial killer like William Edward Hickman.
What was inside Wesley Phelps? Another person fighting to get out? To be heard? We’ll never know.
In some ways, I think Wesley and I are alike. We have demons inside us.
It’s like my own chimera.
I’ve had something inside me fighting to get out. And I’ve tried all my life to ignore the other voice. The voice of my twin.
I’m writing this now because I must listen to my own voice. And it tells me that I must be healing because I feel deep love for Nick and I want to take care of his daughters.
I want to be free to feel whatever life offers.
I want to get on with my life.
Claire went into Nick’s bedroom, which was comfortably cool. It was just past seven and the sun was
peeking through cloudy morning sky, dappling the room with light. She leaned over Nick and kissed his lips, then pulled the blanket up under his chin. He opened his eyes.
“Good morning, sunshine,” he said with a smile.
“How do you feel today?” she asked.
“Not bad for a guy who got shot and skewered by the same guy in one month,” he said. “Where were you last night?”
“I fell asleep on the couch, writing in my brain book,” she admitted. “Do you want me to get the girls up for school?”
Nick threw the covers off and slid his legs over the side of the bed. “Nah, I’ve got ’em. You go to work,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “Sounds like you’ve got a big day, and someone’s gotta bring home the bacon in this house.”
She kissed him, slipped off her nightgown, and headed for the shower.
“You wanted to see me?” Claire asked Doctor Fairborn as she entered her mentor’s office.
Fairborn had a serious look on her face. “How is Nick doing?” she asked.
“He’s fine,” said Claire. “He’s going back to work tomorrow.”
“And the girls?” Fairborn asked.
“They’re doing okay. Still recovering from the bomb scare in the car, but they’re not afraid of Phelps coming back to haunt them anymore.”
Fairborn pointed to the velour sofa, beckoning Claire to sit down. Then she sat down next to her—which Fairborn had never done before.
“If you’re going to take care of this family, then you’re going to need a real job. I just wanted to tell you that you’ve got one here if you want it.”
“But I haven’t graduated from the fellowship yet,” Claire said.
“There’s nothing more I can teach you,” Fairborn replied. “You’re ready.”
Claire was stunned. She had barely been back to work at the hospital seeing patients and certainly didn’t expect this.
“But the search committee . . .” was all she could muster.