Still, the information gave Tony the impression she did not fully ascertain the visual impact she had on others. This was all a normal part of Helen’s life, and as far as she was concerned, she was no different from anybody else. She trusted people; people warmed to her.
Now her life had irrevocably reversed. Assuming she pulled through, the rest of Helen’s life would be one of solitude and fear. She would be heavily scarred, and people would not view her in the same light as they had before the attack. Neither would she be able to trust a stranger and would view every male outside of her home as the person who attacked her.
The longer Tony spent getting to know Helen, the closer he began to understand more about how the killer functioned. Her looks, coupled with a carefree personality, would attract sinister attention, men raping her with their eyes, having lustful thoughts that would appear in their fantasies late at night.
The evaluation was tough going. It took constant reminders for Tony to keep his emotions at bay and focus on the task. Especially while reading Helen’s medical reports and studying the rest of the photographs taken of her at the hospital. The photos of Kitty Crawford taken at the scene also gnawed at his conscious, and he was concerned for those who witnessed the aftermath. The list of those affected was long.
Late Tuesday evening, Tony sat back in the chair he had become accustomed to over the past two days. He closed his eyes and looked through the eyes of a werewolf, a killer in disguise. He played out the events as he saw them in his mind.
Something had interrupted Helen’s run, long enough for her attacker to make his move. They talked about the killer being in frenzy and out of control, but that was wrong. There was no slashing or uncontrolled stabbing. This was a precise, surgical exploration. Missing from her inner thighs was chunks of flesh, but not discarded at the scene, bite marks, cannibalism . . . trophy-taking, perhaps.
An hour and a half later, with the final pieces in place and his notes on the psychological profile complete, Tony left the study, locked the door behind him, and made his way to bed.
He was disturbed going up the stairs and thought it doubtful that he would get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow he would tell Marcus about the man responsible and the most likely sequence of events. Tomorrow, Tony O’Callaghan would speak of the Thirteenth Zodiac personified, the Devil himself.
24:
“Bingo.”
Eamon had known exactly what he was doing under Best Friend’s instructions and it had worked like a dream, just as he’d said it would.
Voluntarily going to the station and providing a statement, having to relive the experience, the pain in his eyes plain for all to see. He was not a suspect, and after talking to one of the lead detectives it was left to the less-experienced officers to record his statement. So in the midst of all the fingerprinting and hair-clip gathering, Eamon expertly fell through the cracks. He played the sympathy card beautifully; the inexperienced police officer accepted Eamon’s offer to provide samples. “This is just a matter of course,” the officer said as he took his fingerprints. “If it wasn’t for you she would probably be dead now. Some would consider you a hero.”
The officer never asked for a swab of his saliva. Otherwise, he would have thrown up right in front of him and promised to come back. They would have had no problem with that; they understood. They saw how two of their own had reacted to the discovery, still not back to work.
He thanked Eamon for his time and wished him a speedy recovery.
“I just want to help, do whatever I can to help catch whoever did this. It was awful, truly terrible. I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said as he got up to leave.
Eamon ambled out the doors of the police station and back to his car, hiding a Cheshire-cat grin on his face. The urge to skip his way down the steps was massive but he resisted. A little dance and a wiggle behind closed doors when he got home would suffice. Eamon liked to dance when things were going his way. Not in front of anyone, so he didn’t have to worry about others seeing the faces he pulled when he wriggled his body about the place. The police had nothing on him, except fingerprints and they weren’t going to find any of those in the future. They had piss. They weren’t looking for him. Eamon Masterson was free to roam and wiggle as he wished. And roam and wiggle he would.
Margaret was halfway through peeling the potatoes for the evening’s dinner when she heard the front door shut, and Eamon come through to the kitchen.
“Hi, I’m back,” he said, tossing a bunch of keys in his hand.
Margaret noticed the smile on his face and that his mood was noticeably upbeat.
“Hi,” Margaret replied. “How did it go? Was it all right?”
He walked through the kitchen and stopped next to the cellar door, picking the key from the bunch that would unlock it.
“It was good. I feel great. That therapy really works,” Eamon said, unlocking the door, “it brought back a lot of memories.” He paused with his hand on the handle before descending the stairs. “He didn’t kill her you know, she’s still alive. I helped save her life and that makes me a hero of sorts, so they tell me.”
Margaret smiled. “You are a hero. Have they caught him yet?”
“No, they haven’t caught him,” he said, irritated by the question. “The police haven’t got a clue. They’re not going to catch him. How do you think they would have caught him?”
Margaret prayed she had not just crossed a line. She never professed to know more than Eamon did. “Well, I don’t know, I was just wondering, you know, what he put you through, finding that young girl the way you did.”
“Hmm,” Eamon snorted. He raised his eyebrows to emphasise his point. “He’s much too clever for them. He’s not going to get caught. He’s probably only getting started.” He walked through the opening.
“Shall I call you when dinner is ready?”
The door shut. The only response was the turning of the lock.
Margaret went back to peeling the potatoes, putting the anxiety she felt in the pit of her stomach to the back of her mind.
25:
“Better the devil you know.”
Bang on ten o’clock, Hunt rang the doorbell to Tony’s house. Like Tony, he didn’t look as if he had slept since they’d last met. Lines of frustration ran across his forehead and his eyes were puffed. He led Marcus into his study, closed the door, and offered him the seat he’d brought in from the living room. A pot of coffee finished brewing on a small table brought in for the meeting.
“Coffee?” Tony asked as he poured one for himself.
“Just black, thanks, that would be great.”
“Any new developments since we last spoke?” Tony asked as he handed Hunt the cup and took his seat behind the desk.
Both men opened up their note pads.
“I’ll tell you what we do have,” Hunt said. “We have established the feathers came from a canary. He used a scalpel on Helen. She has in the region of nine feet of stitched-up scars to prove it. We also got results back on a set of bite marks. They are similar to the indentations of a wolf, although smaller. They were definitely not human teeth.” Hunt looked at Tony, pressing his lips together.
“You don’t believe in werewolves, do you?” Tony asked.
“No, of course not, the saliva is human, but I have never come across anything like this. Mr. Crawford swears it was a werewolf, hair, fangs, dark eyes, the works. Kitty died of a heart attack. The coroner says it was possible she was frightened to death; there wasn’t a mark on her body besides a broken arm from the fall she took. Helen is still progressing but they have pumped her so full of steroids she must be growing in her sleep.
“Now I will tell you what we don’t have. We are still no closer to catching this fuck. We have sweet-fuck-all. The rest of it you are probably already aware of, which is piling shit by the ton on top of the ton of shit we
already have.”
“I don’t follow,” Tony said.
“Jesus, you didn’t see the news or the papers? It’s all over it.”
“I haven’t left this room other than for a piss since I got back.”
“And your wife never said anything?”
“If it’s that bad then Jacky figures I am already working on it. She knows I won’t be in the mood to talk about it for at least a few days.”
“The papers got wind that there is a werewolf on the loose in Farnham,” Hunt said, shaking his head. “It was bound to come out sooner or later. I just wish it was later.”
“Hmm, she might have told me about that had she seen it.”
“They are having a field day with this. The story is going global and not a word written about the fact that the attack happened as the sun came up. News crews from around the world have descended on the city along with radical-type nut-jobs who think they’re werewolf hunters or some shit like that. Since then we have had countless sightings of a seven-foot werewolf leaving Brushy Park and running on the tops of roofs and about buildings. People are phoning us in their droves every night with sightings, thinking a werewolf is looking in at them from their back gardens. A cat goes missing and all of a sudden a werewolf took it, all kinds of shit you wouldn’t believe.
“The streets are remarkably quiet at night. We are still keeping a presence in Brushy Park even though it is deserted come five o’clock. That is, except for the few oddballs who actually want the chance encounter with a werewolf—most of them women. They have this fucked up notion it is romantic, or some shit like that. People are really beginning to believe this crap. All of a sudden, Farnham has become a haven for werewolves and werewolf-lovers alike. It’s like a fucking Twilight Zone premier down there.
“You don’t look surprised. Is that not strange to you?” Hunt finished.
“To be honest, it’s not as surprising as you might think,” Tony said. “Firstly, half-human monsters are as old as the myths of ancient Rome and Greece. Legends of pure evil such as the werewolf and vampire have passed down through the generations where the fear of these mythical creatures becomes so inborn that they become a part of every person’s imagination.
“Second, there is nothing more innocent, more beautiful, and more filled with hope for the future than a child. Put the two together, when something like this happens to a young girl and the media mention a werewolf, it is only logical for the public to assume that these heinous acts had to be committed by one of these monsters.”
“Okay, but does this guy actually think he is a werewolf?”
“It is possible, and he wouldn’t be the first. Peter Stubb, also known as the Werewolf of Bedburg, believed he was a werewolf who would kill and devour townsfolk. ‘Dainty morsels, who agreed with his appetite,’ is how he described them.”
“Oh for fuck sake.” Hunt said, almost in disbelief.
“However, a more likely explanation is twofold. One is that he is using the guise to justify the act of cannibalism. The werewolf has no choice but to eat human flesh to live. And two, is that he dressed up to provoke added fear in his victim because the fear excites him. It also tells us more about him. The werewolf typifies the psychology of the serial killer. During the day he is dead and numb to his surroundings, but at night he is free to satisfy his thirst and live out his fantasies. He took considerable time to present himself as a werewolf, right down to the teeth and eyes, and judging by the account from Mr. Crawford, it must have been pretty convincing.”
“It scared his wife to death,” Hunt reminded Tony. “It sounds convincing to me.”
“The point is he knew what he was doing. He brought the tools he needed with him: Helen’s bindings, the stage—the whole setup suggests planning and deliberation. The canary was most certainly the decoy to stop her in her tracks and gave him the chance to make his move. He knew Helen well enough to know that she would stop for a little bird in distress. Like many serial killers, he snuck up on his prey. She was then disabled, sexually assaulted, and tied in a particular way before being further attacked.”
“You refer to him as a serial killer. Is that what we are dealing with?”
“The chances are high that it’s not a domestic attack dressed up or an argument gone wrong or a one-off episode caused by a psychotic disturbance that wouldn’t happen again. This fantasy did not just pop into his head one day. It has been harbouring in his mind for several years, all the time increasing in complexity and frequency. Now that he has taken his fantasy out into the world he is, in effect, chasing his dreams. It is just a matter of time before he tries again in an attempt to perfect the fantasy. But the trouble we have is, he will never achieve that level of perfection, always thinking he can do it better next time, that this time it will be the perfect killing. We are dealing with a violent sexual psychopath. The question is not if, but what will his time cycle be? That determines the length of time we have to catch him before he goes again.”
Hunt listened as O’Callaghan went on to explain his likely upbringing and the nature of sexual deviancy with its various manifestations.
“The seeds were likely sown in the man’s infancy and childhood. I would expect to find disturbance in his early life, particularly within the family. At some point he became a problem and quite likely the victim of other people’s problems. He grew up with a different set of values from the rest of us, which should have brought him to the attention of the police or social services at some point. Any attempts to repair psychological damage clearly failed.
“Anger and a sense of bitterness developed and fuelled fantasies of being able to punish, control, and dominate women, making them do what he wants. You need to appreciate, Marcus, the delicate interaction between opportunity, sexuality, and the other factors in an offender’s life because his day-to-day existence will have a layered richness just like everyone else. He’s going to enjoy much of the same activities and pastimes.”
“Yeah, but not everyone enjoys slicing up a woman’s body,” Hunt pointed out.
“What happened is a fusion of sex and violence. He associates the infliction of pain with pleasure and that power fuels his sexual desire. Sexual murderers tend to refine their techniques and increase their control over their victims with each new murder.”
“Great,” Hunt said, shaking his head at the thought.
“You have to understand that this person does not view sexual intimacy in the way that we do where it feels good to both parties involved, but he still has a sexual drive and it does not simply go away. He finds himself developing fetishes and vivid fantasies to such an extent that he has lost the ability to sustain or even enjoy sexual intercourse unless he imagines or actually has some very specific factor present. It could be pornography, underwear, or ritualistic behaviour. He becomes so preoccupied with these sorts of things that the actual act itself becomes less and less important. Women become a mere vehicle for his pleasure.”
Tony sat forward in his chair and interlocked his fingers on the desk in preparation for the next wave of information. Hunt took the opportunity to take a mouthful of coffee.
“People tend to think that what they see on the top shelf of the local newsagent is what pornography is all about, but there are publications that cater to far narrower and more specific tastes. These include pornography of rape, violence, and sadism, as well as the sexual abuse of children and teenagers. The abuse of children takes two forms, one where the child or teenager comes across on film as a consenting participant and the other where their turmoil is clear. For people who are excited by the latter, the pain of the child is the important element. For him, I expect you will find a range of disturbing magazines, articles and video tapes stashed away in his house, when you do find him. There will also be reference to the occult and satanic rituals.”
“You said he wants to be able to puni
sh, control, and dominate women, so why do it in such a public place? He could have achieved so much more somewhere private.”
“This was all part of his fantasy. He thought the clearing was private and suited his purposes, a wolf among the trees. To have struck in the open air involved taking considerable risk, but he was so aroused with the outcome he was willing to take that risk. He couldn’t wait to get to the clearing before he sexually assaulted Helen and took her right behind the wall.
“The Crawfords stumbled upon him by accident because of their dog. It was something he did not anticipate, but it worked to his advantage, and he will have learned from that. We know that Helen was the intended victim. Otherwise, he would have killed Mr. Crawford. He decided that he wanted Mr. Crawford to be able to tell the public what happened. It demonstrates he thinks on his feet. I would say he is above average intelligence. Media coverage will only have added to his sense of self-worth, that he has the power to instil a sense of fear into the lives of literally millions of people.”
“This just gets better,” Hunt said. “So we’re dealing with someone who thinks they are the new Hannibal Lector?”
“He is very intelligent, no question, and will be proud of the fact. He will be thinking he is cleverer than both you and I. Research shows that killers with higher intelligence tend to be better organised and more methodical. They plan their crimes in detail and exert greater control over their victims. They also gain more experience as they progress and refine their techniques and behaviour, leaving an ever-clearer signature.”
“You can’t get much clearer a signature than a fucking lollipop stick or whatever the fuck it’s supposed to be.”
“At some point he is going to make a mistake. In the words of Ted Bundy, ‘You learn what you need to know to kill and take care of the details. It’s like changing a tyre. The first time you’re careful, the thirtieth time you can’t remember where you put the wrench.’”
The Ice Scream Man Page 16