The Bestseller

by Stephen Leather

  “Since when have cops cared about treating people?”

  “You’re sick, Adrian. You know you’re sick. You can’t control yourself and you’re going to keep killing until you get caught. It’ll go a lot easier for you if you put an end to it now.”

  Slater nodded slowly as he stared at the detective. “How do you know so much about it?”

  “You’re not the first person we’ve had in here with your problem, Adrian.”

  “Is that what it is, a problem?”

  “It’s not normal, is it?” said Lumley. “You know that. That’s why you need help. And we can help you. If you cooperate with us now we’ll be in your corner. We’ll do what we can to make things easier for you. But if you fight us, we’ll take you down and we’ll take you down hard. Do you understand?”

  Slater nodded.

  Lumley reached over and patted the back of his hand. “So tell us, Adrian. Tell us where the body is so that we can bring this to an end. We need closure. And so do you.”

  Slater looked at Lumley, then turned to look at Mitchell. Mitchell was holding his breath as he stared expectantly at Slater.

  “There’s one thing you can do for me, Joe,” said Slater, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

  “What?” she asked.

  He turned his hands over and held her by the wrists. “A blow job,” he said. “Give me a blow job and I’ll give you closure, all over your pretty little lips.”

  Lumley tried to pull away from him but he tightened his grip.

  “You bastard!” she shouted.

  Mitchell stood up so quickly that his chair fell back and hit the ground with the sound of a gunshot.

  Slater grinned at Lumley. “Come on, Joe, you know you want to.”

  Mitchell grabbed Slater by his shirt and pulled him to his feet. Lumley pushed her chair back, a look of disgust on her face. Mitchell drew back his fist and Slater’s grin widened.

  Mitchell’s fist began to shake as he struggled with himself.

  “Go on, Ed, you can do it,” said Slater. “You know you want to.”

  Mitchell roared and pushed Slater back. Slater stumbled over his chair and fell to the floor. His head banged against the wall and he lay still.

  “Ed!” shouted Lumley. She stood up and went over to the Sergeant. “What have you done?”

  “He fell,” said Mitchell.

  She looked down at Slater. “He hit his head. Ed, you could have killed him.”

  “He’s playing possum,” said Mitchell. He bent down and shook Slater’s shoulder. “He assaulted you. He grabbed you and made an indecent suggestion.”

  “He’s not moving, Ed.”

  Mitchell shook Slater again. His eyes were closed and Mitchell couldn’t see his chest moving. He knelt down and felt for a pulse in Slater’s neck.

  “Should I call for a medic?” asked Lumley.

  “A lawyer would be more use,” said Slater, opening his eyes. Mitchell pulled back his hand as if he’d been stung. “Gotcha,” grinned Slater. “Can I go now? Or do we get a lawyer in here and show him my bruises? I’m easy either way.”

  Lumley’s cell phone rang and she took the call. She listened intently, and then a smile slowly spread across her face. She put the phone away and pointed a finger at Slater. “Game over,” she said. “We’ve got you.”

  CHAPTER 38

  They handcuffed Slater and drove him to Central Park. There was a police cruiser waiting for them along with a van from the police academy and a CSU vehicle, parked with its lights flashing. An overweight uniformed cop pointed them in the right direction and they headed off across the park, Mitchell and Lumley walking either side of Slater.

  “How about taking the cuffs off so that I can have a cigarette?” he asked.

  “It’s illegal to smoke in the park,” growled Mitchell.

  “You know why we’re here, don’t you?” said Lumley.

  “To get a breath of fresh air,” said Slater.

  “To put you behind bars,” said Lumley.

  Ahead of them were a group of police cadets in blue overalls holding shovels and pickaxes. They had stopped digging and had moved away from the area of grass that they’d been working on. A CSU investigator was photographing something in the ground while two uniformed officers looked on.

  A second CSU investigator walked over, holding a portable GPS unit. He was in his late twenties with a shock of ginger hair and freckles across an upturned nose. “Detective Lumley?” he said.

  She nodded. “What have you found?” she asked.

  “A leg,” he said. “Part of a leg, anyway. From the hip to the knee.”

  Lumley looked at Slater. “Got anything to say now?”

  Slater shrugged.

  “Come on Slater. We got this location from your book. We cracked your code. We’ve got another four teams digging at the moment and before long we’ll have them all.”

  Lumley’s cell phone rang and she walked away from Slater to take the call.

  “You know you’re done for, don’t you?” Mitchell said to him. “You think you’re so clever but you’re not half as smart as you think you are.”

  Slater grinned. “Let’s wait until the fat lady’s sung, shall we, Sergeant Mitchell?”

  Lumley walked back, putting her phone away. “We’ve got an arm in Battery Park,” she said. “Complete with a charm bracelet that we know Jenny used to wear. You’re about to be charged with murder, Slater.”

  CHAPTER 39

  The Medical Examiner looked down at the body parts on the metal table and shook his head. “What sort of sick bastard would do something like this?” he asked. He had a name badge identifying him as Darren Wilmot. He was a large black man with a shaved head and a boxer’s broken nose and he was wearing pale green surgical scrubs.

  “A psycho who wants to be famous,” said Mitchell.

  “Is he a butcher, because he’s done a professional job,” said Wilmot.

  There was a thigh, a left foot, a right shin, one forearm, two hands, and a section of torso laid so more than half of the body was still missing.

  “He had a book on dissection and some very sharp knives,” said Lumley.

  “No sign of the head?”

  “We’re working on it,” said Lumley.

  “Did you know she was pregnant?” asked Wilmot, looking at his notes which were clipped to a stainless steel clipboard.

  “We didn’t,” said Lumley. “Can you get DNA so that we can identify the father?”

  “I’ll have it for you by tomorrow. So what’s the story, I was told he was hiding the body parts all over the city? Why would he do that?”

  “Like I said, he’s a psycho,” said Mitchell. “But we’ve got him, so all’s well that ends well.”

  “Didn’t end so well for the girl or her baby, did it?” said Wilmot.

  Lumley’s cell phone rang. “Might be another body part,” she said, and took the call. It wasn’t a CSU calling it was her captain, and she wanted her in the office, right away. “Is there a problem, ma’am?” she asked.

  “Just get back here pronto, and make sure Mitchell comes with you,” growled the captain and she cut the connection.

  “Problems?” asked Mitchell.

  “Not sure,” said Lumley.

  CHAPTER 40

  Captain Chantal Kawczynski scowled at Mitchell and Lumley and pressed the stop button on the digital recorder. “Do you need to hear that again?” she asked.

  “No, Ma’am,” said Mitchell.

  “When did the call come in?” asked Lumley.

  “Three days ago to the Crime Stoppers hotline. The call came from an unregistered cell phone that at the moment is switched off.”

  “And why are we only just getting to hear of it now?” asked Lumley.

  “You heard the caller. A middle-aged man carrying parcels into a car in the middle of the night in upstate New York. One of the parcels looked like it might be an arm. A description of a car and a plate number. It’s taken time to wo
rk through the system.”

  “And that car is registered to Dudley Grose?” said Mitchell.

  “It’s in his wife’s name,” said the captain. She pushed her black-framed spectacles higher up her nose. “Now you tell me what’s going on. We’ve got Adrian Slater downstairs charged with the murder of Jenny Cameron. And we’re saying that he dismembered the girl and distributed the body parts around the State.”

  “He did it, ma’am, we’re sure of that.”

  “That’s as may be, detective, but now we’ve got a call saying that a man who matches the description of the girl’s lecturer was seen acting suspiciously just after she vanished. At the very least we need to check that vehicle. Get a CSU unit out there ASAP.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Mitchell.

  “And if it looks like we’ve got the wrong man in custody, you let me know straight away. The last thing we need is a lawsuit.”

  “There’s no mistake, ma’am,” said Lumley. “Slater did it. I’d stake my job on it.”

  “Detective, you might well be doing just that,” said Kawczynski.

  CHAPTER 41

  Dudley Grose looked over his shoulder at the two heavyset uniformed police officers standing at the front door to his house. He put his arm around his wife who was looking anxiously up at him. “I don’t understand why we can’t go into the house,” he said.

  A CSU with a flashlight was peering into the rear of Grose’s SUV, which was parked in front of the house. “We have a warrant to search your vehicle,” said Lumley. “But if we find anything we might want to extend the warrant to cover your house, so until we know for sure we’re going to need you and your wife to stay outside.”

  “Dudley, what’s this about?” asked Mrs Grose.

  “I don’t know, honey. They won’t say.” He smiled at Lumley. “Look, can’t you at least tell us what it is you’re looking for. It’s clearly a mistake, and if I knew what you wanted I’m sure we could get this resolved without the need for all this fuss.”

  “It won’t take us long,” said Mitchell.

  “Is it Slater? Did he say something? Is he accusing me of something?”

  “Who’s Slater?” asked Mrs Grose, but her husband ignored her.

  “It is, isn’t it? That bastard Slater has accused me of something, hasn’t he?”

  “Let’s just get the back of the car checked out,” said Lumley. “If it’s clean then we’ll apologise and we’ll be on our way.”

  “And my lawyer will be all over you like a rash,” said Grose. “You can’t do this.”

  Mitchell nodded at the warrant in Grose’s hand. “With that we can, Mr Grose. Now please, just bear with us.”

  “Detectives!” called the CSU technician. “Could you come over here please?”

  Mitchell hurried over to the car and Lumley followed.

  “There are traces of blood,” said the CSU technician. He was Hispanic, young and good looking and he made a point of addressing Lumley rather than Mitchell. “Definitely human. I’ll be able to carry out the DNA analysis when I get back to the lab.”

  “Show me,” said Mitchell.

  The CSU investigator showed him a small smear on the underside of one of the seats, and a cent-sized drop close to the door locking mechanism.

  “Let’s get that warrant extended,” Mitchell said to Lumley. “We need to look inside the house. And garden.”

  “There’s something else,” said the technician. He held out his right hand. Sitting in the middle of his gloved palm was a small gold charm. A cat.

  CHAPTER 42

  Dudley Grose slumped forward and banged his head on the table, the dull thuds echoing around the interview room. “Please stop doing that, Dr Grose,” said Lumley. “You’re not helping yourself.”

  Grose stayed where he was with his forehead against the table. “Why won’t you just listen to me?” he said. “I didn’t kill her. Why would I kill her?”

  “We found traces of Jenny’s blood in your car, Dr Grose, can you explain that?”

  “Slater must have put it there.”

  “And we found a gold charm that we know used to be on her charm bracelet.”

  “He must have put that there too.”

  “And there was dirt on your tires that matched soil at Battery Park where we found one of the body parts. Does Adrian Slater have access to your vehicle?”

  “Maybe my wife left the rear door open. He was in my house, remember? Maybe he got a copy of the key. How do I know?”

  Mitchell reached into a black holdall and took out a carving knife in a plastic evidence bag. “Do you recognize this, Dr Grose?”

  Grose sat up and blinked at the knife. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” said Mitchell. “Do you or don’t you?”

  “It looks like the knives we have in our kitchen. But I don’t know. How would I know? Who looks at their kitchen utensils?”

  “We found this knife buried in your garden, Dr Grose. Under a bush.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I can show you photographs of the knife being dug up,” said Mitchell. “I can also tell you that although the knife had been wiped clean, we found traces of Jenny Cameron’s blood and your DNA on it.”

  “If the knife is from my kitchen, of course it would have my DNA on it. But I wouldn’t bury it in the garden, would I?”

  “And how do you explain the blood on the knife?” pressed Mitchell.

  “Slater,” said Grose. “He must have put it there. Maybe he took it when he was in my house. Remember I reported it and you said there was nothing you could do.”

  “And I can also tell you that we have matched this knife to marks on the various bones that we have so far uncovered and there is no doubt that it was used to dismember Jenny Cameron’s body.”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Grose. “Why would I kill her? I loved her.”

  “If you loved her, why didn’t you leave your wife?” asked Lumley. She stood and went to stand by the door, folding her arms. “We’ve spoken to your wife, she said that you’d never discussed divorce. As far as she’s concerned your marriage was just fine. A little stale, perhaps, but she had no reason to think you were going to leave her.”

  “It was complicated,” said Grose. “If I’d moved in with Jenny I’d have lost everything. My house, my job.” He shrugged. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Because your job was important to you?” asked Lumley.

  “Of course. Without my job I have no money, no health benefits, I’d have nothing.”

  “And at fifty-two, that wouldn’t be a good position to be in, would it?”

  “I assume that question is rhetorical,” said Grose. “Look, I loved Jenny. In a way, I still love my wife. If I’d been more of a man then yes I should have left my wife and moved in with Jenny. But I didn’t. But that sure as hell doesn’t give me a reason to want her dead.”

  “If Jenny had told the Faculty about your relationship, you’d have lost your job, wouldn’t you?” said Lumley.

  “Perhaps,” said Grose. “But she wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t that sort of person. She wasn’t vindictive.”

  Lumley walked back to the table and sat down. Grose ran his hands through his hair and cursed.

  “Dudley, look at me,” said Lumley quietly.

  Grose put his hands down on the table and took a deep breath. “I did not kill Jenny Cameron,” he said.

  “Dudley, did she tell you she was pregnant?”

  The color drained from Grose’s face. “What?”

  “She was carrying your baby. The DNA proves it was yours. She was eight weeks pregnant.”

  Grose slumped in his chair and covered his face with his hands. He began to sob quietly.

  “Did you know?” asked Lumley, her voice little more than a whisper. “Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

  Grose looked up, blinking away tears. “Is that what you think? You think I killed her because she wa
s having my baby?”

  “I think that you killed her because if it became known that you’d made a student pregnant you’d lose your wife and your job. And probably never sell another book.” Grose shook his head and closed his eyes. “So you read Slater’s manuscript and thought maybe you could use that to put the blame on him. You cracked the code, some of it anyway. You killed Jenny and you buried the body parts in the places that Slater’s book described. You knew that Slater would be the obvious suspect. You just didn’t plan on being seen.”

  Grose wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Seen? By who?”

  “Someone dropped a dime on you,” said Mitchell. “A woman saw you putting the body parts into your car.”

  “What woman?”

  “Just a woman. She phoned it in.”

  “Who is she?” asked Grose.

  “It was anonymous,” said Lumley. “But anonymous or not, we’ve got all the evidence we need.”

  “Slater made that call,” said Grose.

  “It was a woman,” said Mitchell.

  “Are you stupid?” hissed Grose. “Slater got her to call. It’s been Slater right from the start. Don’t you see?” He began to sob again.

  “Are you prepared to give us a statement, Dudley?” asked Lumley. She pushed a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen across the table towards him. “You’re a writer, Dudley. Why not put it down in writing?”

  “I want to be on my own,” said Grose. “I need to think. I need to get my head straight.”

  Mitchell looked across at Lumley. “Let’s let Dr Grose have a few minutes to himself. I’m sure he’ll realize that the best thing to do is to tell us exactly what happened.”

  “Can we get you a coffee, Dr Grose?” asked Lumley. “Or water?”

  Grose nodded. “Water, please.” He sniffed and wiped his eyes.

  The two detectives left the room and stood in the corridor. “What do you think?” asked Lumley.