American Devil

by Oliver Stark

  The man looked up. ‘Carlisle,’ he said. ‘Winston Carlisle.’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  East Harlem

  November 23, 6.22 p.m.

  A few hours after the man in black had been rolled away from certain death, a cavalcade of red and blues screeched across the car park of the desolate halfway house up in East Harlem. The guy wouldn’t tell them where he lived, but they’d run his name through the system and in less than an hour his file came up on a screen at the NYPD database. Winston Carlisle had a record and he’d just been released into an adult housing block. The address was called through directly to Harper. He gave the order and Blue Team set off.

  Winston Carlisle had been a patient at Kirby Psychiatric and Manhattan Psychiatric Center. He lived in a halfway house in East Harlem. Things were fitting together. The killings started about a month after he was moved to a non-secured room in MPC. He was free to come and go, and that’s when the killing began: a few weeks after his release from a secure ward.

  The quiet parking lot up in the Heights was ripped up by the arrival of Blue Team and the rest of the task force. The halfway house was a low-roofed municipal building. The green barred door was wedged open and a nervous-looking woman sat in reception, eyes wide at the chaos of lights and activity. She’d only been in the job a week - the previous receptionist had died in a traffic accident - and was not yet used to dealing with cops.

  Harper led the team through the door. The killer probably went under any number of aliases as he stalked and dated these women. He probably wore disguises. He was probably a lot smarter than he made out.

  ‘We’re looking for Winston Carlisle’s room,’ said Harper. The receptionist’s arm pointed towards the stairs. ‘Room fifty-two, gentlemen.’

  The team made their way up to the second floor and down the corridor to the small room where Winston Carlisle lived. Eddie Kasper was at Tom Harper’s side. They’d spent the last few weeks hunting this man, terrified by his capabilities, and now they were looking at a urine-soaked bed in a six-by-nine room at the end of nowhere street. Winston Carlisle had been right. He was a nobody. A nobody who wanted to be somebody.

  The two men looked at the small single bedroom and couldn’t believe that it had all started in that tiny, pathetic space.

  ‘So this is the home of the American Devil,’ said Kasper.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Harper. He opened the brown file and read out the report from the hospital. ‘He was a patient at Kirby Psychiatric. He’s got a long record of treatment for paranoia. Get this. Numerous counts of attempted rape against young women going back a long way.’

  ‘Sad little bastard,’ said Eddie.

  ‘It’s not what I expected,’ said Harper. ‘It’s nothing like Dr Levene’s profile. She had him down as a successful guy living with someone. This is a no-self-esteem loner with a history of mental illness. Shit. He must have gone haywire. Probably stopped his medication or something. He was released from the Kirby a month before the first murder. Jesus, we should’ve checked this.’

  ‘That’s too cruel, man. Someone should’ve been monitoring this guy,’ said Kasper.

  Harper pulled back an orange curtain that formed a makeshift wardrobe. The two detectives looked at the hoard. A tin bucket with four bloody knives. Clothes covered in blood. Enough evidence to condemn the man. It was all so casual, so pointless. So fucking avoidable.

  ‘He wasn’t the clinical, terrifying mastermind I’d suspected. He was a lowlife,’ said Harper. ‘How did we miss this one? Somehow, this man went under the radar. Who was checking out recently released prisoners and patients? They should’ve interviewed this man in the first few days of the investigation. What was Williamson playing at?’

  Catching a killer never felt great, but it usually felt good. But this felt really bad. It just seemed so empty. Harper stood at the threshold of the room staring at the bookshelf.

  ‘What you thinking?’

  He looked across at the graphic novels and airport trash and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, no poetry, no art, nothing.’

  ‘Well, at least the women of the Upper East Side can sleep easy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harper. ‘Did anyone make contact with Kitty Hunyardi as yet?’

  ‘Yeah, we got her off the subway train. She’s being debriefed by Victim Support. She’s fine, just shaken. It’s good we can tell her we’ve got the killer behind bars. She’ll be going home soon.’

  ‘Good work, Eddie.’

  ‘Press are all over the precinct, Tom. You need to avoid the front entrance.’

  ‘What did Lafayette tell them?’

  ‘We’ve arrested a suspect, nothing more, but they’re hungry as wolves out there so they’re running with any comment they can get from us.’

  ‘As long as that’s all they’ve got, that’s fine until we charge him.’

  Harper and Kasper walked out of Winston Carlisle’s room. The forensics team were there ready to collect the evidence that would condemn him.

  They were all exhausted by the events of the day as they headed back to the precinct. Most of the detectives would go home, but not Harper. He wanted to interrogate this killer until he understood what the hell had happened over the past few weeks.

  It was the end of November and the team were all ready for a break. Catching the devil felt hollow now, but in a day or two the feeling of relief would come, the blondes would emerge from the shadows and New York would start to glimmer again. Glimmer and forget the horror.

  On his return to the precinct, Harper got straight down to the darkened observation room. Denise Levene had been called in and she stood there with Lafayette and a couple of Blue Team, all crowding round the window watching the interview room and Winston Carlisle through the mirror. Two detectives were still going at him. Soon, it would be Harper and Kasper’s turn again.

  ‘Hard to believe when you get them in captivity, isn’t it?’ said Captain Lafayette. ‘He’s admitting he followed the girl, but he says he didn’t hurt anyone. He’s smart.’

  Harper’s eyes found Denise. ‘What do you think, Doctor?’

  ‘My profile said seven things about this killer. This guy only ticks two boxes, so you know what I think. He doesn’t fit the profile. You sure it’s him?’

  ‘I’ve just been to his room in the halfway house. We found bloody knives in his room, the girls’ bloody clothes. Looks like it was him, Denise.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t fit the usual pattern. Either I’m way off or this guy is not who he appears to be.’

  ‘He’s got a history of sexual assault but no murders. This seemed to come out of all those years inside Kirby.’

  ‘Minor sexual assault and long periods of incarceration doesn’t make a killer, does it?’

  ‘It could’ve been in his head a long time. You just don’t know what’s inside these guys.’

  ‘I do,’ said Denise. ‘I’ve spent ten years finding out.’ She walked closer to the glass and stared into the frightened face of Winston Carlisle. It wasn’t nice to be wrong, and ten years of interviewing killers was telling her she wasn’t.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Downtown Restaurant

  November 23, 8.28 p.m.

  Across town, Erin Nash of the New York Daily Echo was sitting in a plush restaurant dining with a deputy editor from a rival paper. Short-haired, slim and wiry, Erin was pure-bred New York stock. Her father was still a barber in Brooklyn. Her favourite colour was gunmetal grey; her favourite drink was a shot and one day she would be an editor. For now, she was intent on just getting up the first few rungs of the ladder. The editor sitting opposite thought she looked cute, like an angry little elf with big brown eyes. The Daily Post had been impressed with her crime coverage. The Echo’s circulation was up 32 per cent on the basis of her exclusives and this impressed the editor even more.

  Jed Brown was leathery-skinned but his hands were soft from daily mois
turizer. He looked across at Erin’s fierce concentration. ‘What do you make of the arrest? You got any inside information?’

  ‘No, just what everyone’s got. Some guy was pulled out of the subway and they’re interrogating.’

  ‘Could be it’s him.’

  ‘Could be. We’ll have to wait and see.’

  ‘If it is, that means your little goldmine comes to an end.’

  ‘There’s a book in this, if I can get access to the killer.’

  ‘How will you do that?’

  ‘Give up my source to the NYPD in exchange for access. If they’ve got the killer, I don’t need my source any more.’

  ‘You’re quite a determined player,’ Jed said, and smiled. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A cop on the homicide team with a liking for reporters.’

  ‘You’ve got no scruples about that?’

  ‘I do what I got to do,’ she replied, her spoon about to enter the little bowl of Roquefort and asparagus soup.

  ‘You want to play a numbers game?’ asked Jed. His blue eyes were clear and attractive, but he was too old for Erin. And she’d never gone for the perma-tan look.

  ‘No harm playing,’ she replied.

  Jed let his top lip crinkle up into a reptile smile and wrote six figures on the linen napkin in blue biro.

  ‘Want to wipe your mouth on that?’

  Erin picked up the napkin and moved it to her mouth. She read the number. ‘My,’ she said. ‘That’s a big one.’

  Jed laughed with an overexcited bullet-like rattle and nodded. ‘Is that a yes, Miss Nash?’

  ‘A yes to what?’ she replied. God, this was so easy.

  She didn’t have time to hear his answer. Her cell phone lit up with a flash and she picked it up. She listened to the voice on the line, her face bright and animated as the caller revealed his story. As she listened, her face drained of colour. Jed watched with interest as she wrote down everything in her notebook and ended the call. She looked up at her host. She needed to get back to the office.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Brown. That was my friend in the NYPD. I’ve just had a real interesting breaking news story on this American Devil and I’ve got some urgent copy to file.’

  ‘What is it? Everyone’s waiting for confirmation that they’ve caught him.’

  ‘But I got something extra to offer our readers,’ said Erin.

  ‘I wish you were mine, Erin.’

  She smiled and rose. ‘I’ll consider your offer very carefully.’

  ‘Which one?’ he asked and let his hand slide down over her dress as he kissed her cheek.

  Erin raced back to the Daily Echo and started to write up the story. It was another terrific exclusive, and on the basis of her recent track record her editor took the decision to run it without further verification. It was too late for any detailed checks and Erin’s source had been reliable so far. It was too good to miss. The latest news would sell thousands of papers. Murder was big business.

  Erin filed her copy at 9.30 p.m. and then took a moment to think about her future. This was the time she had to make a choice. It might not come again. Which way was she going to go? She smiled. It was nice to have a choice for once; she’d never really had that kind of luxury before.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Blue Team

  November 24, 4.00 a.m.

  Tom Harper was unshaved and smelled like he looked. He hadn’t washed since the arrest and didn’t intend to. He’d worked until midnight interrogating the suspect, reviewing the CCTV images, putting together the team report and briefing his senior and executive officers. He finally laid his head down on the grey blanket of the precinct bunk at 2 a.m. and slept in his clothes for two hours. He woke suddenly at four with a terrible premonition that the killer had escaped him and disappeared down the subway tunnel, laughing like a madman in a film.

  He sat up on the edge of the bunk. His head ached and his big hands were still stinging. He looked down at the deep cuts running across both palms from the struggle in the subway and tried to close his fists, but the wounds had started to crack open. He could hear it now - the footsteps in the dark, his own heavy breathing. His hands were still dark with dust and soot. He could even smell the tunnel fumes in his hair and see the arch of light ahead and the silhouette of the killer moving towards it. He sighed long and hard. In the bunk room, four other officers lay flat out, snoring and stinking. Tom pushed himself to his feet and dragged his body towards the coffee pot.

  There was no one around in the large investigation room. It glowed pale and ghostly with pre-dawn light. Tom’s eyes scanned the five blue boards with their photographs of pointless slaughter. There wouldn’t be another. Thank God for that. He felt the emotion rising from his thoughts and breathed in quickly. Hundreds of officers had slugged through these past days, working overtime and trying to do something about these killings in their muted, sarcastic, smart-assed but none the less caring way - enough to go home empty, with no energy or emotion for their own lives and families. He nodded his thanks and respect to the empty room. They’d nailed the bastard and now he was sitting in a cell some fifty feet below him, surrounded by cold steel and concrete.

  In his right hand, Harper picked up the previous day’s New York Daily Echo. The headline was ‘Serial Killer Turns Cop Killer’. Harper had been right. Erin Nash had been told about the Williamson murder by someone on the team. One day he’d find out who it was and that person would be very sorry. Underneath the headline, there was a composite image of the five female victims with Detective Williamson in the middle, looking more like the killer than one of his victims. Erin Nash didn’t need to try to make this sensational; the grainy print of the photographs was enough of a headline - it gave the faces the aura of tragedy.

  Tom walked up to his profile board. Denise Levene had constructed her vision of the killer. He read slowly, sipping scalding coffee slowly over his lips so it burned the tip of his tongue. She’d written seven single traits: High school educated, White, Mid-thirties, Self-controlled, Police/military background, Living with someone, Employed in sales.

  Tom took up a blue marker pen and circled two words: White, Thirties. He looked at the rest and crossed a line through the other five traits. It was hard to get a profile right when the killer was as deranged as someone like Winston Carlisle. Even though Denise had been so sure and he’d been convinced himself, it wasn’t a perfect science. It was all guesswork really and profiles were often hit and miss. He took a cloth and scrubbed the profile off the board. No need for recriminations: they had their man.

  Harper took the stairs down to the cells. His shoes tapped out a quick beat on the concrete steps.

  He walked down the corridor, past the thick steel doors painted in cream enamel, as if this touch of softness could disguise the need to incarcerate untamed human evil. He stood outside the cell. His heart was beating hard in his chest. He read the board. Carlisle, W. He pulled back the bolt, which clinked loudly in the quiet of the cell. He lowered the flap. He felt like a man in a fairground who’d paid to see a monster. He put his eyes to the gap and stared in at the figure sitting on a bunk, staring silently at the floor. This was the Devil - this grey-haired snivelling piece of humanity was the American Devil, but it just didn’t feel right.

  All of a sudden, out of the silence Harper heard Captain Lafayette shouting. He listened but couldn’t make out what was being said. He shut the steel flap and hurried upstairs.

  Captain Lafayette was sitting in the investigation room. The rest of Blue Team were struggling in from the bunkroom. Lafayette looked deadly serious. He had been woken himself forty minutes earlier when the first copy hit the street. The mayor’s office had been in touch directly. Their words were to the point - ‘What the fuck is happening?’

  The men looked at each other in the dark room. Lafayette looked at his men. All of them looked tired. Well, they were going to feel a lot worse in a minute or two. Lafayette threw down a copy of the New York Daily Echo.

  ‘Read
it for yourself.’

  Harper moved towards the table and turned the paper round so that the headline faced him. The byline name under the subheading was Erin Nash. He took up the paper and read the report out loud.

  AMERICAN DEVIL STILL AT LARGE

  PSYCHO SLAUGHTERS BLONDE HEIRESS AS COPS CLAIM CAPTURE

  Manhattan’s notoriously sadistic pattern killer, the ‘American Devil’, struck again on the Upper East Side yesterday evening as cops were interviewing the man they believed to be the killer, a source said.

  The stripped and mutilated remains of the rubber heiress, Katrina Hunyardi, 23, were found in her apartment an hour after she had been released by the NYPD. She had been raped and stabbed repeatedly with a thin-bladed knife.

  The American Devil, who poses his dead victims in macabre and artistic ways, again left his horrifying signature. Kitty Hunyardi was posed like an angel and covered with cherry blossom. As with all his previous kills, the Devil took a trophy - this time, he removed the victim’s hands.

  The NYPD yesterday were confident that they had the killer behind bars. So confident, in fact, that only hours after being identified as a target for the killer, Kitty Hunyardi was left without police protection. That mistake cost her life.

  Lafayette stared at the team. ‘What the fuck’s going on? I thought we had Katrina Hunyardi? She was in the fucking station yesterday afternoon. Two cops took her home. She ID’d Winston Carlisle. What’s going on?’

  Blue Team had no idea. They looked around at each other. ‘It’s got to be some prank,’ said Eddie. ‘Or maybe a copycat.’

  ‘Have we had any reports? Any homicides yesterday or last night?’ asked Harper. ‘Have we called Kitty? What do we know?’

  Lafayette sat down. He was looking close to a coronary. ‘Nothing. No reports, no homicides, but we’ve been calling Kitty and there’s no reply. We’re sending someone over now. Jesus. If something’s happened to her!’