‘Go on.’
‘Well, I think he’s more likely to be blue-collar, but that doesn’t mean he’s not extremely clever. He’s a practical man, but instinctive and persuasive. He’s probably quite charming, too. Charm is a common feature of the most dangerous psychopaths – I’m sorry, I’m sure you knew that already, Lee, I don’t mean to patronise – and that’s how he’s managing to get these poor women to go off with him without a fuss. He’ll have some convincing cover story or other; I’ll bet he even manages to makes them laugh, too. They’ll feel perfectly safe with him.’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘You know all this, Stella?’
She shook her head. ‘Not exactly . . . but I do seem to have innate understanding about such things. Did that telegram from England mention the Edinburgh conference I attended in May?’
He shook his head.
‘It was a three-day affair for psychiatrists and psychologists . . . I presented a paper on predictive behaviour. Anyway, on the last day they gave us an exercise in something quite new, something called profiling. We were given details of six separate repeat-killer cases from Europe and America, with certain key information altered or withheld so we couldn’t identify them. All the cases had been solved. We had to predict what the personality types of the murderers turned out to be.’
‘And?’
Stella looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Well,’ she said, hesitating, ‘the fact is that in each case I got the killer more or less bang to rights. Social background, approximate age and IQ . . . there was one strangler who killed five women in Brussels before he was caught and I said he was probably a bus conductor and he was, Lee . . . and there was a poisoner in Italy, I forget where exactly, who I knew would turn out to be a schoolmaster, and he was – a deputy head, actually.’
The detective whistled. ‘So I’m impressed. What do you think our man here in the Keys does for a living?’
She wrinkled her nose, surprised at the question. ‘Really? It’s obvious, surely . . . I mean, in a general sort of way, if you think about how he snares them and presumably bears them off before he overpowers them.’
‘So enlighten me.’
She neatly stacked the files and slid them back into their envelope before replying.
‘Whatever it is, it’s definitely got something to do with cars.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Well, in every case, the victims’ cars have been locked, the keys are gone, and the girls have taken their things with them – handbags and so on. No signs of any kind of a struggle. I think that gives us the basis for the reasonable belief they went willingly, even calmly. They remembered their things and they remembered to lock up.’
He nodded, disappointed. ‘I think all that’s already accepted, Stella. I don’t see what that’s got to do with—’
She gestured to him to be quiet. ‘I haven’t finished, Lee. We have to ask ourselves why four bright young girls would go off with a stranger like that, assuming he was a stranger. In most cases it would have been getting dark, too, which you’d think might add to their feelings of insecurity.’
She put her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers under her chin. ‘I’ve been trying to put together what would be necessary for each one of them to drop their guard so completely.’
Stella began counting off on the fingers of her right hand.
‘One. He would have been very persuasive and reassuring. In other words, a charmer. That’s a classic psychopathic trait, as we said. But if he was doing the knight in shining armour bit, why didn’t he offer to jack up the car and put on the spare? We can only theorise, of course, but he must have come up with a believable reason not to do that. Maybe he lied and told them the spare was flat, or it was too dangerous to change the wheel in the dark, or the toolkit was missing. The point is, he must have demonstrated a lot of authority. They accepted whatever he came up with at face value.’
‘Very good, Stella. But I still don’t see the car connection.’
‘I’m coming to that.’ Stella paused, frowning. ‘OK. Two. I think he didn’t just sound convincing; he looked convincing, too. I realise this is extended conjecture, Lee, but my instincts are telling me I’m on the right track, they really are. I believe this man carried extra authority, especially on the subject of cars, because he has something to do with them. Professionally, I mean.’
The FBI man stared at her intently. ‘Are you trying to say you think this guy could be cop? A patrol car officer?’
‘It’s possible. You should certainly examine the local police car patrol records for the four nights we’re talking about, see if there’s any kind of suspicious pattern. But aren’t there two officers to each car?’
He nodded. ‘Usually, though not always. All the same, I’ll get it checked out. Go on.’
‘Three. I believe the clinching factor in the girls going off with him was something to do with the actual car he was in. It represented an added element of reassurance. Presumably he offered to give them a lift home in it and clearly they were happy to climb in.’
She paused for a moment, thinking hard. Eventually she continued: ‘I said earlier that we’ve been assuming this man was a stranger, largely because there’s no known connection between any of the victims. But what if they all did know him, even if only by sight? Or at the very least, were familiar with the car he was driving? Familiar enough with him or his vehicle, or both, for all four girls to feel perfectly safe going off with him.
‘Which brings us to four.’
Stella took a deep breath.
‘I think he’s probably a local taxi driver.’
28
He awoke restless and distracted. Pages of Milton’s masterpiece lay scattered on the floor by his bed; the poem had done nothing to calm or comfort him the night before.
The 7 a.m. thump of the rolled-up Courier thrown by the paperboy against his cottage’s screen door got him out of bed, but he was lethargic as he went to collect it. He wouldn’t make page one today. He’d done nothing to earn it.
Five minutes later, he was pacing between his tiny studio kitchen and the TV lounge and back again in a tight figure of eight, the twin chicanes curving sharply at the Baby Belling stove at one end of his compact home and the portable TV at the other.
He couldn’t recall being this excited. Not since the day he’d finally decided to act out the fantasies that had remorselessly consumed him for almost as long as he could remember.
The Courier’s headline alone had almost arrested his heart and breathing. His hands had begun to tremble so badly that he’d had to lay the newspaper flat on the tiny kitchen table so he could read the paragraphs beneath that glorious, glorious banner and accompanying photo.
An English rose, indeed.
For him.
Just for him!
And by order of the fucking President of the United States of America. This wasn’t a dream come true because he’d never had the audacity to imagine even for one second that such a glittering reward would be his. And after less than a month’s work!
He forced himself to calm down and switched on the coffee percolator in the kitchenette. Only when he had a steaming mug of Colombia’s finest cupped between both hands did he return to the Courier. Now, he read its astounding front-page story with meticulous attention.
AN ENGLISH ROSE FOR A KEYS KILLER
By Henry Stewart
JFK has personally intervened in the ongoing Keys Killer case. The President this week requested a British expert on repeat slayers join police and FBI investigators as special advisor.
The Courier can reveal this specialist to be stunning English psychology graduate Stella Arnold (pictured). Miss Arnold, believed to be still only in her early twenties, has rapidly acquired a formidable reputation in Europe as a prodigy: a youthful yet leading authority on homicidal psychopaths.
Sources close to Fla. Governor C. Farris Bryant last night confirmed that Miss Arnold flew to Miami as early as Tuesday this we
ek and has already held an initial meeting with the senior FBI officer in overall charge of the investigation.
The Courier knows the location at which Miss Arnold has been placed during her attachment but is withholding this information for the security of the investigation.
He burst out laughing. What a joke. He studied the photo again. He’d recognised the picket fence and palm trees in the back of shot the moment he picked the paper off the porch. The clincher was the fragment of clapboard building with wooden steps down to the beach that was visible on the extreme right of the picture. That was the hotel dining room. He’d delivered and collected around a dozen or so fares there this year alone.
She was staying at Largo Lodge. He turned back to the closing paragraphs of the story.
It is understood that Miss Arnold’s specialist knowledge includes the relatively new science of ‘profiling’ – predicting the personality type, social class and sometimes even the profession of a wanted killer, a factor which can significantly reduce the scale of the task facing investigators.
‘Profiling is a very promising field of study,’ Miami University criminologist Professor Ernest Raymond told the Courier last night. ‘The hunt for the killer becomes more centred. It’s like using a sniper’s rifle as opposed to a dragnet. If this English expert is everything the White House clearly believes her to be, the days of the Keys Killer remaining at large may well be numbered.’
Another burst of laughter forced the gulp of coffee he’d just swallowed back up from his throat and out of his mouth and nose, spraying across the lower half of the newspaper in front of him. He managed to sweep it to one side just in time to preserve the sanctity of her photograph. HER, hunt HIM? Didn’t they understand anything? After all that he had achieved? All that he had proved? He studied the photograph again.
She was remarkably beautiful. And she was his. She belonged to him. His gift. The paper said so, didn’t it?
Very well. He would claim her.
29
‘How long you known ’bout this bitch for, Foster?’
The pudgy Miami detective threw the newspaper to the floor and glared at the FBI man opposite. There were scattered mutterings from other officers standing around the room.
Lee had arrived at Key Largo’s police headquarters to discover a mutiny of sorts had already begun. He realised immediately he must neutralise it before the investigation was derailed by injured professional pride and wounded southern male vanity.
He’d walked into the temporary operations room to find a gaggle of detectives crowded round that morning’s Courier, Stella’s startled face staring out at them from the front page. One of the men was poking at her image with a stubby forefinger, saying: ‘I ain’t taking no advice or orders from some goddamn stuck-up English-her-ladyship, I’m tellin’ you guys that for free.’
Now they were glaring at Lee, waiting for his reply. He made direct eye-to-eye contact with the man who’d challenged him.
‘How long? For a whole lot longer than it’ll take me to bust you clean off this investigation, lieutenant. I can have you directing traffic by noon, trust me. Christ, in my time I’ve canned guys I’d call friends. You, I don’t even like.’
The man opposite blinked and licked his lips, glancing at his fellows. ‘Sounds to me like you been pussy-whipped good and proper already, Agent Foster.’
Lee crossed the space between them in three strides and pushed the lieutenant hard against the wall. As the man bounced off it he twisted him through 180 degrees, shoving his face into the white-washed brickwork and sliding his right arm under the astonished detective’s jaw, putting him in a fierce choke-hold. The man spluttered ineffectually.
‘Hey!’ one of the others shouted. ‘You assaulting a fellow officer there!’
Without looking round, Lee snarled: ‘Not for the first time, pal, and if you don’t shut your yap I guarantee you it won’t be the last.’ The man fell silent.
‘Right.’ Lee tightened his grip on the lieutenant’s throat and the man’s chokings were cut off. He raised his voice. ‘Listen up, every one of you. Stella Arnold knows more about the kind of man we’re after than you guys put together. She knows more than I do, come to that. She’s not here to give anyone orders: she’s here to give us the kind of advice we need to nail this bastard before he tortures another kid to death. Meanwhile, the only orders around here come from me. You got that, everyone? You got that, lieutenant?’
He suddenly released his grip and the man slid down the wall, coughing and retching.
Lee ignored him and turned to face the others. ‘Show of hands. Anyone who wants off this case raise your arm NOW. I don’t want pussies on my investigation who feel threatened by a twenty-two-year-old girl. Go on – raise your chickenshit hands. Then you can clear your desks and go home. I’ll decide what to do with you later.’
No one moved a muscle.
Lee let the moment hang a little longer before nodding briefly. ‘OK. So let’s get back to work. Someone bring the lieutenant here a glass of water.’
He walked across to the blackboard in the corner of the room and wiped it clean with the sponge hanging from a cord at the side. Then he chalked a single word in capitals and tapped it with a fingernail.
‘Cars.’
The squad looked at each other, mystified.
‘He’s something to do with cars,’ Lee explained. ‘Mechanic, maybe. Car rental.
‘But most likely he’s a cab driver. We’ll start with the latter. I want every taxi outfit here on Key Largo visited in person. Then if necessary we move on to garages, then the rental companies. We’re looking for a youngish guy, probably under forty, probably good-looking, probably smooth-talking, probably been on the job a while. We need them to account for their movements on the four nights in question. Anyone who can’t do that, or you have even the slightest bad feeling about – bring them in. Cuff them if you have to. We’ll fingerprint every damn one of them until we find our man.’
The half-throttled lieutenant spoke in a rasping croak. ‘That’s a lot of guys. It’ll take us days. And we’re short here. Coulter – he’s been running the case until now – called in sick yesterday. Suspected appendicitis. He’ll be out for—’
Lee turned to him. ‘Breathe easy, pork chop. I spoke to Coulter by phone from the coast before I flew down here. We’ll manage. Right now I want you to go down to the control room and bring up the patrol car records for all four nights. Look for anything unusual or suspicious.’
‘What? You think he’s a cop? Seriously?’ someone asked after a shocked pause.
Lee shrugged. ‘He could be. Now, let’s get on it, gentlemen.’
Lee Foster had been born in the middle of the Great Depression twenty-nine years earlier. His father Laurence was then a Phoenix-based architect with no commissions to build anything any more, and his mother Frances was a hairdresser with her own salon and no customers. By the time Lee was six months old, the mortgage company had foreclosed on the loan his parents had taken out to buy the salon two years earlier, and Laurence had sold his Ford for 200 dollars, their furniture for not much more, and bought one-way train tickets to Los Angeles.
‘Everyone says it’s not as bad in LA,’ he told his wife. ‘We’ll rent somewhere and start over. We’ll be fine.’
And by Lee’s third birthday, they were. Laurence had landed a job at City Hall thanks to FDR’s huge public investment programme and Frances was waiting for their son to start school so she could enrol at law college. By the time Lee was in high school, his mother had graduated and was practising in the rich field of accident and injury litigation. In 1941 she won a major case for the Teamsters union – Frances masterminded their strategy in a class action revolving around truckers’ safety on long-haul trips – and the Fosters bought a three-storey house on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.
By the mid 1950s Lee had graduated with honours from UCLA and was wondering exactly what to do with his crisply furled diploma in English Literature. He toyed
with the idea of teaching but the idea didn’t really appeal to him.
Then one evening, alone in the house while his parents attended a charity ball downtown, he idly switched on the family’s TV set. The titles of a brand-new weekly cop drama were playing.
By the time the credits rolled thirty minutes later, Lee’s world had somersaulted.
City Detective told the story of a tough-but-bright New York police lieutenant, played by an actor called Rod Cameron.
Lee was captivated before the first commercial break. He realised it was a stupid popcorn cop drama – he’d worked out who the killer was inside ten minutes – but it lit a fuse deep within. Crudely but effectively, the programme had revealed his destiny to him.
He was going to catch killers. He was going to save people.
He was going to be a police detective.
Officer Foster spent less than three years on the LA force before he was talent-spotted by the FBI and quietly suborned into its ranks. His skill was to be able to look at a case, any case, in three dimensions. He could see into and around and behind whatever facts were assembled before him, however sparse.
‘You have perspective, Mr Foster,’ his FBI recruiting officer had told him. ‘You see round corners. Most of us see stuff flat, like in a regular movie.’ He mimed putting spectacles on. ‘But you have those 3D glasses, don’t you? You have depth of field. In this business, that’s a rare and precious gift, son.’
Now, pairing off his officers to begin the trawl around Key Largo’s cab firms, Lee privately wondered where that 3D vision had gone. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t grasped the potential car link before Stella had. She was right; it was obvious. In fact, he hadn’t had a really useful insight into this case since arriving in the Keys. Mind you, that was less than twenty-four hours ago and he was unbelievably tired. It had been an exhausting summer on the west coast and he was still coping with the three-hour time difference between here and California. He should stop beating himself up.
The Way You Look Tonight Page 12