The Bestseller

by Stephen Leather

  “And the body’s gone?”

  “Not so much as a fingernail.”

  Mitchell grimaced. “How much blood is that, do you think?” he asked one of the CSU investigators, a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a potbelly straining at the waist of his paper suit.

  “A body’s worth, pretty much,” said the man.

  Mitchell nodded. “So he takes the body away but doesn’t clear up the blood. Doesn’t care that we know that he killed her.” He looked over at Lumley. “Any sign of the knife?”

  “There’s a knife block in the kitchen but all the knives are accounted for. He did it, didn’t he?”

  “Who did it?” asked the CSU investigator. “Husband? Boyfriend?”

  “A writer,” said Mitchell. “He killed her and butchered her and now he’s hidden the body parts.”

  “Are you serious?” asked the man.

  “As serious as cancer,” said Mitchell. He looked at Lumley again. “Let’s go get the bastard.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Slater sat back in his chair. His RayBans were perched on the back of his head. It was just after seven in the evening and Mitchell and Lumley had left him on his own in the interview room for the best part of two hours. It was a standard technique, letting the suspect worry about what was going to happen. But it didn’t seem to have fazed Slater in the least and he grinned at them as they took their places on the opposite side of the table.

  Mitchell stared at Slater impassively for several seconds before speaking. “When was the last time you saw Jenny Cameron?”

  Slater shrugged. “A few days ago. I’m not sure. Last time I was in Grose’s class, I guess.”

  “What about her apartment? When was the last time you were there?”

  “Never been to her place.”

  “You sure about that?” asked Mitchell.

  “It’s not the sort of thing I’d forget,” said Slater. “She’s fit, is Jenny Cameron.”

  “She gets your pulse racing, does she?” asked Lumley.

  Slater grinned at her. “Not as much as you do, Joe.”

  “Detective Lumley to you,” she said.

  “I thought we’d moved beyond the formal stage,” he said.

  Mitchell pointed his finger at Slater. “If you were in that apartment, the CSU guys will find out. And then we’ll have you.”

  “CSU? Don’t you mean CSI?”

  “What?” said Mitchell.

  “I thought it was CSI. Like the TV show.”

  “In New York it’s the Crime Scene Unit. CSU. You don’t want to believe everything you see on the TV, Slater. Real CSU investigators don’t carry guns.” He pulled his automatic from his holster. “But detectives do. We carry guns and every now and again, if we’re lucky, we get to use them.”

  “Ed…” said Lumley.

  “Don’t worry, Joe,” said Mitchell, holstering his weapon. “I wouldn’t dream of accidentally putting a bullet into Mr Slater’s head.”

  “See there’s the thing, Sergeant Mitchell,” said Slater, taking his pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

  “You can’t smoke in here, “ said Lumley.

  “I’m not smoking. I just want to hold the pack. It’s a tactile thing.” He put the pack on the table and began turning it around slowly. Side. Top. Bottom. Side. “Like I was saying, Sergeant Mitchell. It’s not CSI, it’s CSU. But ninety per cent of people would think it’s the latter because they watch the TV show. And most people think CSI investigators carry guns and solve crimes when in fact all they do is process crime scenes.”

  “Your point being?” said Mitchell.

  “My point being that you’re telling me not to believe what I see on TV, yet you seem hell bent on believing what I wrote in a work of fiction. A novel.”

  “It’s not the same thing at all,” said Mitchell.

  Slater shrugged and continued to play with the pack.

  “You said you were going to kill a student,” said Mitchell. “Now Jenny Cameron has disappeared and her bathroom is awash with blood.”

  “But no body, right?”

  Mitchell narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you haven’t mentioned a body. Just the blood. So all you have at the moment is a missing person who might have cut her finger.”

  “There was a lot of blood,” said Lumley. “But you know that. You were there. You did it.”

  “I don’t even know where Jenny lives,” said Slater.

  “You never went to her apartment?”

  Slater shook his head. “She said she lived in Chelsea but that’s all I know.”

  “In your book you said you followed her to her apartment.”

  “My book’s a work of fiction.”

  Mitchell’s eyes hardened. “What did you do with the body, Slater?”

  Slater sat back in his chair and folded his arms and said nothing.

  Mitchell leaned forward. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Slater smiled. “See, I’ve never understood what that meant? How could a cat possibly have my tongue? In the whole history of emergency room medicine has a patient ever turned up with his tongue missing and blamed a cat?” He toyed with his cigarette pack as he spoke.

  “You’re good at avoiding answering questions that make you uncomfortable, aren’t you?” said Mitchell. “Where is Jenny Cameron’s body?”

  “You tell me,” said Slater. “And we’ve already agreed that all you have is blood on the floor.”

  “Where else could that have come from?”

  Slater shrugged carelessly. “Maybe it was the wrong time of the month.”

  “You bastard,” hissed Mitchell. He grabbed the pack, dropped it onto the floor, and stamped on it. “I’ve just about had as much as I can take from you.”

  Lumley pulled back the empty chair and sat down next to Mitchell. “How about a coffee, Adrian?” she asked. “I could do with a coffee. What about you?”

  “Coffee would be good,” said Slater.

  “How do you take it?”

  “Same as my women,” said Slater. “Hot and black.” He grinned. “Joke.”

  Lumley looked across at Mitchell. They exchanged a look and Slater realized that she wanted to be alone with him. Or at least to have Mitchell out of the room for a few minutes. He resisted the urge to smile. She wanted to play Good Cop, Bad Cop. He crossed his legs at the ankles and waited to see how she’d play it.

  Mitchell left the room and Lumley waited for the door to close before speaking. When she did her voice was low and soothing, the way you’d talk to a spooked horse.

  “I can see how it could've happened, Adrian. You were arguing. You lost your temper. It happens. It happens to everybody.” She leaned over the table towards him, like a priest waiting to hear confession. “You lashed out, maybe she fell, hit her head. You didn't mean to do it. It just happened.”

  Slater put his head in his hands and muttered incoherently.

  “So she's dead. It's not your fault, maybe she even asked for it. But then you panicked. That's when you remembered the book. That's what gave you the idea of getting rid of the body. So you did what anyone else would do. You got rid of the evidence. I can understand that, Adrian. She was dead. It didn't hurt her. But you have to tell us where the body is. You have to help us so that we can get you out of this mess.”

  Slater shook his head and mumbled something.

  Lumley leaned closer. Her face was inches from his. “You can tell me, Adrian. I’m here to help you.”

  Slater turned his face slowly towards her, then before she could react he licked her cheek. She jumped back and yelped. Her chair fell backwards as she stood up, her eyes blazing. “If you don't start answering some questions, I’m gonna beat the living shit outta you,” she shouted.

  Slater leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “I’m shaking,” he said.

  “You think I’m joking, Slater? You think I can’t do it? You think because I’m a woman I can’t take you? Because you’re w
rong. Dead wrong.”

  The door opened and Mitchell walked in with three coffees on a plastic tray. “What’s wrong?” he asked Lumley.

  Lumley picked up the chair. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Detective Lumley was just explaining how investigations are carried out here in New York City,” said Slater. He reached over and took one of the coffees. “You didn’t spit in it, did you?” asked Slater.

  “Nah,” said Mitchell. “I pissed in it, though.”

  “Nice,” said Slater. He sipped his coffee and smacked his lips appreciatively.

  Mitchell sat down. “You think you’re pretty darn smart, don’t you?”

  Slater shrugged. “I’ve got a pretty high IQ, that’s true.”

  “Through the roof, I’m told.” Mitchell sipped his coffee.

  Slater did the same. They put their cups down on the table together. “Told by whom?”

  “The therapist who treated you in Los Angeles after your father killed himself.”

  Slater smiled thinly. “I’m confused, Sergeant. Wouldn’t my sessions with a medical professional be covered by privilege?”

  “Probably,” said Mitchell. “And we probably wouldn’t be able to use them in court. But all we’re doing here is talking. Chewing the fat.”

  “You spoke to my therapist?”

  “Let’s just say that I know that you were a bright kid but that you had issues. Bed-wetting. A few pets that got hurt. The odd fire. All the common or garden precursors of a serial killer. And that was before your father blew his head off with a shotgun.”

  “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Mitchell,” said Slater, quietly.

  “Compared with what? Killing a girl and butchering her?”

  “You’ve no proof of that. Don’t you get what’s happening here? The accusations you’re making are pure fiction. The same as my book.”

  “You think this is a game, don’t you?” said Mitchell.

  “If it is, you’re not making a very good job of it.” He looked at his watch. “Time’s a wasting,” he said. “And as much as I enjoy these little chats. I do have a book to write.”

  “We’ve not finished,” said Mitchell.

  Slater stood up. “Yes you have,” he said. “You’ve no body and no evidence. You’ve got nothing. If you had anything you’d have charged me already. It’s time to put up or shut up, Sergeant. Either you arrest me or I’m out of here.” Mitchell and Lumley looked at each other but said nothing. Slater grinned, knowing that he’d won. He threw them a mock salute. “You guys have a great day, what’s left of it,” he said, and walked out of the room.

  Mitchell cursed and slapped his hand down on the table.

  “Well that went well,” said Lumley.

  “We’ll get the bastard,” said Mitchell. “Guys like that, they want to get caught.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “He wants to know how smart he is. That’ll be his downfall. Because eventually there’s only one way that he can prove to us how smart he is and that’s to confess.”

  Lumley sipped her coffee. “I’d prefer we got him by old-fashioned police work,” she said.

  “That’d be nice,” said Mitchell. “Any thoughts on how the hell we’re going to do that?”

  “My thinking cap’s on,” she said. “Did you see the mirroring, by the way?”

  “The what?”

  “The mirroring. He was doing it to you all the time. When you reached for your coffee, he did. When you folded your arms, he copied you. He was even matching his breathing to yours.”

  “Why the hell would he do that?”

  “To put you at ease.”

  Mitchell scowled. “Well that sure as hell didn’t work, did it?”

  “It’s something sociopaths do, instinctively. Good salesmen do it, as well, you make a customer feel that you’re in synch with him and he’s more likely to do business with you. Sociopaths do it so that you’ll think they’re normal, when of course they’re not.” She nodded at the door. “Slater’s a Grade A sociopath, Ed. No question of it. He’s never going to confess. The big question is whether he’s going to kill again or if it was just a one time thing.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Lumley grimaced. “I think Adrian Slater is one sick son of a bitch, and one murder is more than enough. I’m going to put him behind bars if it’s the last thing I do.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Dudley Grose screwed the cap back onto his fountain pen and leaned back in his chair. The words just wouldn’t come. No matter how he tried he couldn’t form a coherent sentence. He’d never believed in writer’s block and always thought it an excuse for laziness, but for the first time in his life he understood what it involved. His mind simply wouldn’t focus, and the more he tried to concentrate the more other thoughts intruded. He kept thinking about Jenny, her soft, supple body, her smooth skin, her wet mouth. He’d phoned her half a dozen times but her cell phone was off. He’d left two messages, knowing that to leave more would make him appear too needy. When he wasn’t thinking about Jenny he was thinking about Slater and his infernal book. He couldn’t understand why the police hadn’t simply arrested him.

  Grose groaned. He stood up, massaging the back of his neck, and walked over to the window. His back was hurting, and the pain had grown worse over the past three days. He’d taken painkillers but they hadn’t even taken the edge off the pain and now the discomfort was constant. His wife was busy in the garden, down on her knees and working a trowel into the soil at the base of a spreading bush. Maybe it was time to leave her. Maybe he should just walk out and move into Jenny’s apartment. Maybe that would help kick start his writing again. To hell with the university, to hell with everybody.

  His cell phone rang and he hurried over to his desk. His face fell when he saw that it wasn’t Jenny. It was Detective Lumley, he’d stored the number last time she called.

  “Dr Grose, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” she said.

  “About Slater?”

  “About Jenny Cameron. I’m afraid it looks as if she might have been attacked. We haven’t found her body but there’s a lot of blood in her apartment.”

  Grose began to shake. He sat down heavily as the room swam around him.

  “Dr Grose?”

  “Yes, I heard you,” said Grose. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’m sorry, I’m… I can’t…”

  “I understand, Dr Grose. As I said, we’re not a hundred per cent sure what has happened but we can’t locate Miss Cameron and at the moment we’re working on the assumption that she has been murdered.”

  “By Adrian Slater, right? Have you arrested him?”

  “We don’t have any evidence yet,” said Lumley.

  “You’ve got his book,” said Grose. “He admitted that he followed her home. What more do you need?”

  “We need physical evidence,” said Lumley. “We need proof. Or a confession.”

  “His whole book is a confession. The bastard went and confessed before he killed her.”

  “Mr Grose, you can rest assured that we will get Slater. He’s not going to get away with this.”

  “I wish I believed that,” said Grose.

  “There is something you can do to help us, Dr Grose. We’ve dusted her apartment for fingerprints and we’ll be running a comparison with Slater’s prints. But we need a list of anyone else who might have visited her apartment. Friends, fellow students. Could you give us a list of anyone you think has been there so that we can get their prints?”

  “Of course,” said Grose. “Let me ask around when I get to the university tomorrow.”

  Lumley ended the call and Grose put down his cell phone. He felt suddenly light headed and he took slow, deep breaths. Jenny was dead? JENNY WAS DEAD? How could it have happened? He’d told the Head of Faculty what Slater had planned, he’d told the Dean, he’d told the cops. How could she be dead? He felt his eyes fill with tears. “Oh God, Jenny,” he whispered. He put his h
ead in his hands and began to cry.

  CHAPTER 34

  Lumley jumped as the car door opened. She relaxed as soon as she saw it was Mitchell, juggling a Burger King bag and two Cokes. She took the bag and one of the Cokes from him and he slid into the passenger’s seat. “Anything?” he asked.

  Lumley shook her head as she opened the bag. “Quiet as a mouse,” she said. From where they had parked in the marina car park they had a clear view of Slater’s yacht. They had followed him from the station and watched as he’d gone aboard at just after eight o’clock the previous night. It was now nine o’clock in the morning.

  “The Whopper’s mine, I got you a cheeseburger.”

  Lumley took out a Whopper and handed it to Mitchell. He put his Coke in the cup-holder and took the burger.

  “There’s two French fries in there,” he said.

  Lumley took out her cheeseburger and handed him the bag. “You can have both the fries,” she said. “And the onion rings.”

  “Diet?”

  “It’s breakfast, Ed,” she said. “You said you were going to get breakfast. Coffee and a croissant is what I was expecting.”

  “And breakfast of champions is what you got,” he said. He bit into his burger and sighed before chewing.

  “I can practically hear your arteries hardening,” she said. She unwrapped her burger, sniffed it and took a bite. It actually tasted quite good but she faked a grimace.

  Mitchell slurped his Coke and then wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. “It hasn’t worked, you realize that?”

  “Jury’s still out,” said Lumley.

  “Jury’s come out, announced its verdict and gone home in a taxi,” said Mitchell. “If he was going to dig up the body he’d have done it by now. If he even halfway believed that we knew where he’d buried the bits then he’d have to move them.”

  “So the fact that he’s sitting on his boat as if he didn’t have a care in the world means what?” asked Lumley.

  “It means that he didn’t do it, which I doubt,” said Mitchell. “Or it means that the thing about the numbers is all crap.”