“But you didn’t come inside Roberto’s.”
“I wasn’t going to make a scene. If you want to be with him, that’s your choice. I came over here to put your personal belongings in your car. When I saw someone had flattened the tires, I got worried.”
His hands were empty so I asked: “Where’s my stuff?”
“I put it back in my car and waited for you. I’m parked over there.” He nodded to his left.
“Will, did you flatten my tires?”
“Hell no! Dani,” he said, “you should know me better than that.”
We looked at each other in silence for a moment. This was a man whom I had slept with, whom I had loved, or at least thought I had loved. Was it possible that he was a serial murderer?
Will said, “You’re going to need a ride home. I’ll take you.”
The headlights of a car blinded both of us as it drove suddenly into the parking lot, stopping a few feet away. Coyle stepped out of the car. “Looks like you might need rescuing again,” he said.
“Why don’t you leave us the hell alone?” Will said.
Coyle walked toward us.
My eyes darted from him to Will and then back to him.
“Thanks, Agent Coyle,” I said, “but I’ll be having Will drive me home.” I moved closer to him.
Coyle looked at us and then reached under his jacket and removed his 9 mm Glock handgun.
“You’ll both be riding with me tonight,” he said.
“What the hell are you doing?” Will asked.
“I see you’re not surprised,” Coyle said to me.
“You gave yourself away in the restaurant,” I replied.
“How’d I do that?” he asked.
“I warned you that your Achilles heel was your ego.”
“So you said.”
“When you told me there was no connection between the homicides in Detroit and Yonkers, you said it didn’t matter there were fingers, toes, a penis, and ears missing.”
Coyle shrugged and said, “So what?”
I said, “None of the murder victims was missing an ear. The only person who could have been missing an ear was Tiny Nunzio, and the reason why you knew he was missing one was that you shot him in the chest, cut off his ear, and then shot him in the head to hide that fact.”
Coyle said, “Touché, Ms. Fox. But you must admit, not taking a trophy from Nunzio would have been difficult.”
“Where do you keep your playthings?” I asked. “The trunk?”
“Let’s take a little ride together and I’ll show you,” he replied. He tossed his car keys to Will. “You drive.”
“I’m not driving you anywhere,” Will said.
“Suit yourself. I’ll simply shoot Ms. Fox now, here in this lot.”
“Will, do what he says,” I replied. “Agent Coyle is a serial murderer. He’s the one who killed Isabella Ricci.”
“What?” Will exclaimed. “I thought Persico butchered her. Not an FBI agent!”
“Enough yakking, get in my car,” Coyle said.
As ordered, Will slipped behind the steering wheel while I got into the backseat with Coyle, who sat directly behind Will. While keeping his handgun pointed at me, Coyle took out a pair of handcuffs and tossed them over the car’s front seat to Will.
“Cuff one of your hands to the steering wheel,” he ordered.
A reluctant Will did as he was told. He slipped one of the handcuffs around the steering wheel and snapped it closed. He slipped the other handcuff around his left wrist and locked it. His right hand remained free so he could hold both sides of the wheel when he drove.
“Start the car and drive us to your apartment,” Coyle ordered.
“You can’t kill us,” Will said. “They’ll know you did it.”
“Thanks to Ms. Fox here, they won’t.”
“What’s he talking about, Dani?” Will asked as he drove the car from the restaurant’s parking lot.
“Yes, Dani, why don’t you tell him,” Coyle jeered. “Tell Mr. Harris here about how you thought he could have been responsible for at least two murders in Detroit and five more murders here. How you thought he could be a killer.”
“Dani, what’s he talking about?” Will asked.
“The homicides here were done by one man,” I said.
“That would be me,” Coyle happily chimed in.
“Earlier tonight, I told Coyle that you were a suspect,” I said.
“Me? Why me? How could you possibly think it was me?”
“Will, your background actually fit an FBI profile of our killer,” I explained. “But I told Coyle about you tonight as a ruse. I wanted to keep him off track. To make him think you were my number-one suspect.”
“How ironic,” Coyle chimed in, “that your attempt to misguide me is going to become my alibi. I will tell everyone that during our dinner at Roberto’s, Ms. Fox shared her suspicions about you with me. She told me about the missing body parts. Of course, I didn’t believe her but she was insistent. When we left the restaurant, Will Harris bushwhacked us. He forced us to go to his apartment. When we got there, I tried to disarm him. During the melee, Ms. Fox was fatally shot but I managed to draw my own weapon and kill him. They’ll probably give me a medal for killing you, Mr. Harris.”
“O’Brien will know it’s bullshit,” I said. “He was searching your apartment tonight while we were at dinner.”
“I thought your phone call might have been to him,” Coyle replied with confidence. “But it won’t matter. FBI agents are above reproach, you yourself suspected Will, and everyone will accept your serial murder theory as soon as they find an ice chest full of surprises in Will’s apartment.”
“The missing body parts,” I said. “In your trunk.”
“Yes, another irony of the evening,” Coyle said. “You set out to stop me from pulling off a series of perfect murders and, in doing so, you ended up giving me two more victims to enjoy. And I will very much enjoy doing to you what I did to Isabella Ricci.”
“Why did you kill her?” I asked.
“I thought you already had all of this figured out,” he sneered.
“Explain it to me, please,” I said, catering to his ego. “If you’re going to kill us, I want to die knowing why.”
“To your credit and my amazement,” Coyle said, “you got much of this right. I did start that gang war in Detroit, by nailing that young Marcus Smith boy to a cross and then putting an arrow through his rival gang member’s heart. Call that child’s play. After that, I just sat back and watched the mayhem unfold.”
“You were trying the same thing here,” I said, “only with the mob.”
“The bureau had been following Persico for months and hadn’t caught him jaywalking,” Coyle said. “When I saw him enter that apartment, I thought, At last, he’s up to no good. I followed him and as soon as I saw him leave her apartment, I knew what to do.”
“Did you know then that Isabella was Tiny Nunzio’s daughter?” I asked.
“No, I was simply going to frame him for killing her. I needed to get rid of Persico. He was the only reason a war between the two families hadn’t started. Nunzio was encroaching on his turf in Staten Island but Persico was keeping a truce. We knew from the wiretaps on Corrado DiVenzenzo’s phone that if Persico was out of the way, the rest of the Battaglia crime family would attack the Gacciones.”
“You knocked on her door,” I said, encouraging him to tell us more.
“I knocked on her door at the same moment Persico was driving away from the apartment buildings. I showed her my FBI credentials and she let me in. You can figure out what happened next.”
“When did you discover Isabella was Nunzio’s daughter?” I asked.
“Not until the next day,” he said. “It was as if God had reached down and touched me. I knew that the families would go to war if I turned up the heat, just like the gangs in Detroit.”
“Did turning up the heat mean killing the Mancinis?” I asked.
“Tha
t drunk saw me when I came into the apartments after Persico. I couldn’t take a chance of him telling anyone. I made his cow of a wife watch him die. Then I killed her. It was delicious.”
“And Marco Ricci? Why him?”
“The plastic surgeon and the stalker—Donnie Gilmore—those murders were bonuses and they were entirely your fault, Ms. Fox,” he said.
“Mine?”
“That’s right. I had already achieved what I’d wanted, but you kept finding other suspects. I needed you to focus on Nunzio and Persico. I didn’t want you bringing in Gilmore for questioning. I wanted the two families at war. Those two men’s blood is on your head for not following my plan for you.”
Will turned the car down a side street and I realized we were only a few blocks from his apartment. If I was going to do something, I needed to do it quickly. I was certain that once Coyle got us into Will’s apartment, he’d kill Will and begin torturing me.
Will decided to join our backseat conversation. “I can’t believe you thought I might be a murderer, Dani!”
I couldn’t believe he was still stuck on that thought. “This isn’t the best time to discuss this,” I said.
Coyle said, “Oh, I disagree.”
I said to Coyle, “I kept doubting my suspicions about you because you’re an FBI agent.”
“One of the perks of carrying a badge,” he said. “But don’t go all high and mighty on me. They all deserved to die. Isabella was a dyke, the Mancinis were drunks, and Marco and Gilmore were sexual perverts. They were trash.”
“Who gives you the right to judge them?” I asked.
My comment clearly irked him. He slid to the middle of the car’s backseat to be closer to me. I was now sitting with my back pressed against the passenger door, having turned sideways to face him.
“You don’t get out too often, do you?” he said. “Charles Bronson in Death Wish. Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan. No one is crying over the scum anymore.”
“How about Will and me?” I said. “Are we scum, too?”
Coyle grinned. “I actually found you interesting, Ms. Fox. A challenge. I’ll consider you collateral damage. And I’ll be sure to tell your mother at your funeral how highly I regarded you.”
I remembered what the profiler had said about a serial murderer’s deep insecurities, his need to feel powerful and his anger, if ridiculed.
“So Agent Coyle, tell me one more thing. Why are you so fucked up?” I asked. “Did the kids make fun of you for wetting your bed? Did they call you Wally? Did they make fun of little Wally and not choose him to play on their teams? Or is it because you were molested? Did your daddy turn you into his little butt buddy?”
He leaned forward. The two of us were now squeezed so tightly together that I could see his pupils and feel his breath on my face. “That’s it, isn’t it, Wally?” I said, continuing to taunt him. “Was it your daddy who busted your cherry? Or some neighbor? An uncle? Did you secretly enjoy being molested? Did you smile when they had their way with you?”
In a swift motion, Coyle tucked his handgun into its holster under his jacket and when his hand reappeared, he was holding a butterfly knife, which he expertly flipped open with a snap of his wrist. Its five-inch blade glimmered in the light from passing streetlamps. He pressed its blade against my neck. “I was going to wait until we got to your boyfriend’s apartment. But since you’ve got such a potty mouth, I think we can begin our fun here. Now what were you saying about me being a butt buddy?”
With my back still pressed against the passenger door, I looked at Will sitting in the car’s driver’s seat. He turned his head and I could see a panicked look on his face as he glanced over his right shoulder at Coyle. “Don’t hurt her!” he yelled.
“Oh, I am definitely going to hurt her,” Coyle replied. “And the sad thing is that you won’t be around to write about it on tomorrow’s front page.”
Coyle was totally fixated on me. He slowly inched the blade along my skin, dragging it gently from my neck to my left cheek, being careful to not cut me. “Isabella Ricci squirmed when I cut her,” he announced. “You should have seen her eyes. They’re the windows into the soul, the poets say. You will squirm, too, Ms. Fox, when I cut you. What will I see when I look into your soul?” With the tip of his blade, he nicked my cheek, drawing first blood.
I couldn’t wait any longer. I grabbed his right hand with both of mine and shoved the knife blade away from my face to his left, pinning it against the backseat. “Will!” I screamed.
Although Will’s left hand was cuffed to the steering wheel, he shifted his weight to his right side and reached over the front seat with his free right hand, as if he were trying to retrieve something that he’d left in the vehicle’s backseat. When Will did this, his right foot instinctively pushed down harder on the accelerator, causing the car to bolt forward. He released his left hand from the steering wheel so that he could extend his reach as far as possible before being stopped by the handcuffs. The car careened out of control. With his right hand, Will reached for Coyle’s neck but before he could grab it, our car crossed the center line and smashed into a camper parked on the left side of the avenue.
The impact caused Will to fly forward into the steering wheel and dashboard. Coyle’s body was ejected from the middle of the backseat but the impact wasn’t forceful enough to send him through the car’s windshield. He struck it with a thud and stopped, his legs dangling behind him in the rear compartment. The crash sent me tumbling, too, but I was the farthest from the car’s point of impact and my back had been pinned against the back passenger door. Because of my position in the backseat, I wasn’t thrown over the front seat as Coyle had been. Instead, I hit the back of the front seat with my chest and shoulder, knocking the air from my lungs. Although startled, I recovered after a few moments and immediately reached for the rear passenger door to escape.
Before I could open the latch, a hand grabbed my shoulder.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Coyle yelled. He had dragged himself back into the rear seat and was now holding me. His nose was bleeding but he looked otherwise unharmed.
“Yes, I am!” I shouted. I began hitting and kicking at him in a frenzy but I was trapped between him and the still-closed door.
Coyle seemed impervious to my blows. As I watched, he raised his right hand and I saw the knife blade. Helpless, I started to brace myself for the inevitable when I saw a blur behind Coyle and watched as the FBI agent’s head was snapped backward. It was Will. He’d reached over the front seat and grabbed Coyle’s hair.
I quickly unlatched the rear passenger door.
But Agent Coyle was not done with me yet. Even though Will was holding Coyle by his hair, the agent brought the knife blade down, plunging it into my left calf. The pain was excruciating and I cried out. Satisfied, Coyle released the knife and reached up with both of his hands to free himself from Will’s grasp.
Dragging my leg with the knife still stuck in it, I opened the door and shoved myself from the backseat. My backside hit the blacktop. As I looked into the car, I could see Coyle struggling to unlock Will’s hair-filled fingers. Will refused to let go.
A propane tank attached to the back of the camper ruptured, spewing gas into the evening air. The gas hit a small flame burning under the car’s crumpled hood and when it ignited, flames shot into the vehicle. A terrified look swept across Agent Coyle’s face as he realized what was about to happen. For a second, we locked eyes and I could see the hatred in his. He made one last effort to free himself, but Will held tight. The initial propane explosion was followed by a second boom when the flames reached both vehicles’ gas tanks. Flying metal and broken glass shot from the car around me as the vehicle was lifted by the blast from the pavement and then crashed back down. I could see Coyle’s body inside, now a human fireball.
“Will!” I yelled.
Something hit my head. I heard voices yelling around me but couldn’t make out what they were saying. I blacked out.
; 52
Detective O’Brien was sitting next to my hospital bed when I opened my eyes. My head hurt like hell and my skull and leg were wrapped in bandages. “Dani,” O’Brien said, “can you hear me?” His voice sounded like he was miles away.
“Your ears got damaged,” he said. “You got busted in the head by a piece of flying metal, got some minor burns, and, of course, a knife was found stuck in your leg.”
“Will?” I said.
O’Brien shook his head.
I felt like I was going to vomit. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t manage it. “Coyle?”
“Dead, too.”
“You need to rest,” I heard my mother’s voice say.
I turned my head slightly and saw her standing next to O’Brien. There was an IV in my arm. My mother reached over and lovingly touched my forehead.
I closed my eyes.
It was late afternoon when I awoke the second time. O’Brien and my mother were still there.
I was less groggy but my head still hurt.
I spoke briefly to my mom and then O’Brien said to her, “Could you give Dani and me a few minutes in private?”
“I’ll go get Dani some chocolates from the gift shop,” my mom volunteered. “Sweets always make you feel better, dear.”
O’Brien stayed silent until she was gone. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
“It was Agent Coyle. He was the serial murderer. He was forcing Will to drive us to his apartment. He was going to plant the body parts and tell everyone that Will was a serial murderer and that he had overpowered him but couldn’t save me in time. He was going to torture me like he did Isabella Ricci.”
“Rotten son of a bitch,” O’Brien said. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“In the car, Will and I tried to overpower him. The car crashed. I managed to get out. Will held Coyle inside. Is Will really dead or did I dream that?”
“Sorry, Dani, Will’s dead.”
“The last thing I saw was him grabbing Coyle’s hair, keeping him from getting out of the car. He saved my life, O’Brien.”
O’Brien nodded. “He was an okay guy, even for a reporter.”
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