by James Carol
He zipped up his sheepskin jacket then sat down cross-legged on the grass and got settled in for the long haul. They were heading into the lull. Every investigation suffered from this phenomenon. Everything you could think of had been done, the bases were all covered, and there was nothing left to do except wait and see how things played out. Only then could you plan your next move.
Winter hated the lull. He hated waiting, hated having to be patient. It had been that way since for ever. Even as a kid he had always been doing something to keep his mind occupied. When his brain was idling, that’s when the problems began. His thoughts would chase themselves down dead ends and get stuck there. He’d start to obsess over things that he had no control over.
For instance, what if someone had worked out earlier what his father was? How many young women’s lives would have been saved? And these were young women who would maybe have gone on to get married and have kids. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he saw golden threads running out from their hearts, spreading out into the future, splitting and separating and multiplying. Then, in the next heartbeat, they’d burst into flames and it would be like they’d never existed.
Of course, when he asked that ‘What if’, the real question was what if he’d worked it out? Ultimately, the question was pointless. It didn’t matter how he answered, nothing changed. Those fifteen women were dead, his mother was dead, and his father had been tried and executed, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about any of that.
Then there was the question of how early was early enough. If he’d realised at victim number eleven or victim eight or victim four, would that have changed how he felt? The answer was no. Even one victim was one too many, which rendered the question invalid. His father had started killing before he was born. Winter was only eleven when he was caught. He’d just been a kid. What could he have done to change things? Yet here he was, all these years later, still trying to make amends.
He understood the futility of this way of thinking, but couldn’t have stopped himself even if he’d wanted to. He’d made an uneasy peace with himself years ago. This was what he was. This was who he was. There was nothing he could do to affect the past, but he could do something about the future. Every time he took down a killer he was saving lives, and that had to mean something.
The sound of footsteps on the stone stairs broke into his thoughts. A couple of seconds later Rosalea Griffin appeared, rising out of the ground. She was wearing latex gloves and her good eye was twinkling.
‘Was it natural causes?’ he asked her.
‘You’re stretching the definition to breaking point, but yes I’m pretty sure it was natural causes. Obviously, that’s just my best guess at the moment. I’ll be able to give you a definitive answer after I’ve examined the body.’
Winter motioned towards her hand. ‘What’s that?’
Griffin held up a crumpled seven-by-five photograph. ‘I thought you might want to take a look. I found this wedged between Eugene Price and the mattress.’
The ME was talking, but Winter couldn’t hear a word she was saying. Mendoza was talking, too, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying, either.
The photograph had been taken in front of the Alice in Wonderland statue in New York’s Central Park. Amelia had her arms around a man who was an inch or two taller than she was. The man was smiling like he’d won the lottery and his head was turned towards Amelia as though he’d just kissed her. She was smiling, too. It was a smile that lit up her whole face, a smile that made her look just like a normal person.
Anyone looking at this photograph would conclude that these were two people who were very much in love. It would be easy to build a whole story based on that assumption. Maybe they’d met at college, or maybe they’d bumped into each other in a bar, or perhaps they had met online. They’d hit it off straightaway, and quickly discovered they had loads in common. They thought the same way about things. They finished each other’s sentences. They even owned the same DVD box sets.
The future was as easy to divine as the past. Marriage, kids, and their Golden Years spent living down in Florida because the heat was better for your arthritis, and watching the sun set was more pleasant than watching the rain. Two people this much in love, you just knew you were looking at one of those couples who would end up dying within days of each other.
They’d probably saved for a while before booking their vacation to New York, and while they were saving planned exactly what they were going to do when they got there. They’d have wanted to do all the tourist things. A trip to the top of the Empire State, a visit to the Statue of Liberty. Shopping expeditions and meals out and a Broadway show. And, of course, the obligatory stroll around Central Park.
It was easy to imagine things playing out this way. Except that wasn’t what had happened. There had been no Broadway shows or meals or shopping trips, and there had been no slow-burn evenings where they’d shared a bottle of wine and dreamt about what they were going to get up to when they finally hit the Big Apple. And there would be no kids, or twilight years spent wishing away the sunsets in Miami or Fort Lauderdale.
‘What the hell?’
Mendoza’s voice pulled Winter’s attention away from the photograph. She was standing at his shoulder, shaking her head from side to side and biting her lip. There were frown lines on her forehead and tiny crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes.
‘This makes no sense, Winter. No sense whatsoever. Why would Amelia Price be hanging out with Ryan McCarthy?’
47
‘Who’s Ryan McCarthy?’ Griffin asked.
‘Ryan McCarthy’s the reason I came to New York,’ Winter answered. ‘He preyed on young gay men who were visiting the city on business. He’d hook up with them then go back to their hotel rooms. Instead of a nightcap, he raped and dismembered them.’
‘If he was doing this in a hotel room then he probably wasn’t using power tools. Even battery operated ones. Too noisy.’
‘The markings were consistent with hand tools,’ he confirmed.
‘How small were the pieces?’
‘Small.’
‘Yikes, that’s going to take time. How did you catch him?’
‘We worked out that the victims used the same websites to arrange dates while they were in the city, then we created an online avatar that ticked all of McCarthy’s boxes and went fishing.’
‘And once you got a bite, I’m guessing you got dressed up in your tightest pair of jeans and went out there to reel him in.’
Mendoza laughed. ‘That was never going to happen. Winter doesn’t like getting his hands dirty.’
Winter frowned at her. ‘For the record I have no problem getting my hands dirty.’
‘Yeah right. Anyway, we sent Greg Behringer out to meet him. He’s one of my colleagues in Homicide, and the closest match we could find to McCarthy’s victim profile. He was white, the right age group, and with a bit of work we managed to get it so he looked the part. And it worked. Before the clock struck twelve, McCarthy was in custody.’
For a moment the three of them just stood in silence, everyone lost in their thoughts. A plane was cutting through the blue sky, heading towards Canada, a long white contrail flowing in its wake.
‘I guess it’s time to discuss the white elephant that’s just walked into the clearing,’ Winter said. ‘Where does Amelia Price fit into all of this?’ He turned to Griffin. ‘Can I see the photo again, please?’
‘Sure, but before you ask there’s no way you’re getting to touch it.’
Griffin held the photograph up by the edges to make as much of the picture visible as possible, and Winter and Mendoza leant in closer to get a better look. All he saw was the obvious lovers’ story he’d seen earlier, which, in light of everything else he knew about Amelia and McCarthy, was clearly a fabrication.
The more he looked, the more questions the picture provoked, but the one question he kept returning to was how had Ryan McCarthy’s and Amelia’s orbits collided? What circum
stances had conspired to bring them together? Right now the only solutions he could come up with involved fate or coincidence, which was as good as having no solutions at all.
The idea that they just happened to be in the same place at the same time was too big a coincidence. Sure, people met every day, and some of them would go on to spend the rest of their lives together. But Amelia and McCarthy weren’t your everyday people, they were psychopaths, which meant there was little to no chance of them bumping into each other in the street. The odds of that ever happening were just too long. Compounding this was the fact that serial killers didn’t tend to advertise themselves, which lengthened those odds even further. So how did they meet?
Winter found his cell phone and took a quick snapshot of the photograph. He studied it again, but no matter how hard he looked, no matter what angle he came from, there were still too many questions and nowhere near enough answers. The crunching of twigs interrupted his thoughts. The sound was coming from the path leading to the house.
Mendoza and Griffin had also heard the noise and were staring towards the path. As the footsteps got louder and closer, voices floated into the clearing on the wind, dislocated fragments of sentences that made little sense. A moment later Birch appeared from between the trees, along with a dozen men from the Monroe Sheriff’s Department.
The guy at the front talking to Birch was obviously the sheriff. His hat was cleaner, his buttons shinier. This was someone who didn’t get out of the office much, and when he did it wasn’t to go traipsing through the woods. The body language was interesting. Birch was overcompensating, trying hard to get taken seriously, while the sheriff wasn’t trying at all.
Griffin walked over to meet them, and Winter sidled up next to Mendoza. He leant towards her ear. ‘Unless you want to spend the rest of the day sitting in an interview room, we need to get out of here,’ he whispered. ‘You know how this one plays out. We found Eugene and everyone will want to know how. There are much better things we can be doing with our time.’
‘Like getting our asses back to New York so we can talk to Ryan McCarthy,’ Mendoza added in a low whisper.
‘Exactly.’
‘So, what’s the plan?’
‘I’m going to make like I need to use the bathroom. Give it a minute or two then make your excuses. Everybody’s going to be more concerned about what’s happening underground to worry about us at this point. But they will at some point, and before that happens I want to be long gone. We’ll meet at the car.’
48
Winter was standing by the driver door of the BMW when Mendoza appeared a couple of minutes later. She came striding around the side of the house, saw him, and her body language switched from slightly amused to out-and-out pissed. She stalked over and stopped in front of him. Winter held his hand out.
‘No chance,’ she said.
‘A bet’s a bet, Mendoza. Amelia was there when her brother killed the Reeds.’
‘I’ve only got your word for that.’
‘No, you’ve got Amelia’s word. She told me she was there.’
‘Was I sitting there in the room while she confessed? No. Do you have a motive for lying? Yes you do. And have you proved in the past that you’re prepared to lie and cheat to get what you want? Absolutely.’
‘We’re wasting time here. It’s going to take at least five hours to get back to New York. Maybe longer if the traffic is heavy.’
‘You’re the one who’s wasting time, not me.’
When he didn’t move, she sighed then pulled out the key, zapped the doors and slapped it into his hand. ‘Don’t say a word.’
Winter got in the car and altered the seat position. Then he adjusted the rear-view mirror, fixed his seatbelt and got himself comfortable. Mendoza climbed in the passenger side and buckled up.
‘This isn’t over, Winter. Not by a long shot.’
‘You done?’
‘For now.’
Winter hit the gas pedal and drove out of the clearing. For the next couple of minutes, he kept his mouth shut and concentrated on avoiding the ruts and potholes. The hardest thing was taking it slow. He hated driving slowly. The second they reached the highway, he put his foot down.
‘Are you just going to sit there sulking all the way back to New York.’
‘I’m not sulking, I’m pissed. There’s a difference.’
‘Okay, here’s a question: how does Amelia know Ryan McCarthy? And don’t answer straightaway. I want you to think about it.’
Mendoza gave it the best part of mile then sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they attended the same meeting of Psychos Anonymous.’
‘If only it was that simple. The problem is that the numbers don’t add up. The population of America is over the three hundred million mark, and conservative estimates put the number of active serial killers in the region of a hundred. That means one in every three million people in this country is a serial killer. In other words, those church halls are going to be lonely old places.’
‘I was joking. You know what a joke is, right?’ Winter glanced over and she waved him away. ‘Eyes back on the road. I’d like to get there in one piece. And anyway, why are you suddenly so happy? This has made everything so much more complicated.’
‘What’s not to be happy about? We finally have a decent lead. Incidentally, I caught that it was a joke. Believe it or not I was joking, too.’ He glanced over again. ‘They met on the internet. Using the internet would fit with what we know already about Ryan McCarthy. After all, he used the net for stalking his victims. Did you see a computer at the Price house?’
Mendoza shook her head.
‘Which means Amelia has a laptop. Which means she has it with her. You keep going on about evidence, Mendoza. My guess is there will be plenty of evidence on her hard drive.’
‘But why would they be searching for each other in the first place?’
Winter went quiet for a mile or two, thinking hard. ‘Having someone to share the fantasies with makes the game more exciting. They can talk about what they’re going to do and work themselves up into a frenzy. And when they’re done, there’s the added bonus that they have someone to relive the memories with.’
‘Okay.’
‘Also, in any intimate relationship a power dynamic comes into play. One person is subservient, the other dominant. In a healthy relationship the power play won’t be too extreme. However, when you’re dealing with the fractured personality of a psychopath everything becomes more exaggerated. There are plenty of psychopaths out there who suffered horrific abuse as kids. That’s going to leave scars on the psyche, and those scars are going to get carried through to adulthood.’
‘And all of that’s going to get played out in their crimes. Yeah, I get that. The pain that was inflicted on to them gets projected on to their victims.’
‘But that’s only part of it. When two killers get together, that’s when things get really interesting. One plays out the abuse sadistically, the other masochistically, and that can lead to some pretty extreme behaviour.’
‘So in this case, Amelia is the dom and McCarthy is the sub,’ she replied.
‘At this point, that’s consistent with what we know about McCarthy. Everyone we spoke to said the same thing, his neighbours, his boss, everyone. He kept himself to himself and didn’t make waves. But the rage was there. It was squashed all the way down and looking for a way out.’
‘And the common ground that brought them together was that they were both abused by their fathers.’
Winter went quiet for another half mile. ‘It’s an unfortunate truth that plenty of people have been screwed up by their fathers. Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
‘Which means you’ll have chat rooms dedicated to the subject. Places where people go to vent.’
‘And that’s where McCarthy found Amelia. He went trawling around those sites looking for a kindred spirit. So when do you think the killing started? Before or after he met her?’
‘Good q
uestion.’ Winter glanced over and Mendoza gestured for him to get his eyes back on the road again. ‘The MO was pretty much the same from the first murder to the last. Any variation could be put down to McCarthy gaining confidence and looking for ways to improve his methods, which is entirely consistent with the route most serial killers follow. What I’m not seeing is any evidence that he hooked up with Amelia after he got started. If that had happened we would have seen a definite change in MO as a result of her influence. Or to put it another way, the fantasy becomes a joint effort rather than a solo project. Therefore Amelia was there from the start.’
Winter stared at the highway on the other side of the windshield, the miles falling away behind them, his thoughts chasing themselves around and around inside his head.
‘What are you thinking?’ Mendoza asked.
‘It’s nothing.’
She looked over at him. ‘And that’s what you said just before you worked out how to catch McCarthy. So with all due respect, even if it is nothing I want to hear it.’
Winter blew out a sigh. ‘Okay, because we haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary, we’ve assumed that McCarthy’s kills were based on his fantasies. But what if we’re wrong about that? What if they were actually based on Amelia’s fantasies? He had the urges, but what if he didn’t have the imagination to channel them?’
Mendoza nodded. ‘It’s possible. So where does that lead us?’
Winter sighed again. ‘Maybe somewhere, maybe nowhere. It’s just an idea.’
They fell into another long silence. The road rumbled away beneath the BMW’s tyres, while the breathtaking scenery of upstate New York paraded past on the other side of the glass. Questions, questions, questions, thought Winter, always too many damn questions and not enough answers.