American Devil

by Oliver Stark

  The tall guy with the salesman smile was already approaching her with a little swagger in his hips. Denise tried to avoid eye contact, but it wasn’t going to work with this guy. He thought she was cute, liked her business-like hairdo, her long legs - and the sniffy attitude just turned him on even more. He liked a challenge - chased skirt tasted so much better than skirt on a plate.

  ‘Hey, there, sweetheart, you look a little lost.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m waiting for someone.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got some directions here you might find helpful. ’ His large hand pressed flat on the bar and he leaned in close, his cologne suffocating her. ‘If you want to know where to go, just follow the arrow,’ he said and rolled his forefinger down his tie to the arrowhead at the end. Denise felt his arm curl around her shoulders. ‘I’m always happy to take you there, sweetheart.’

  Denise pushed his arm away from her. ‘If I want to visit a sewer, I’ll call Environmental Protection.’

  The man smiled, showing his bright white teeth. ‘Come on, baby, we can go the scenic route if you want, but I always like to go as the crow flies, if you know what I mean.’ His hand slipped round her waist.

  ‘Get your hands off me or you’ll regret it,’ said Denise, low and calm.

  ‘I can feel you’re warming towards me,’ he said, still holding her waist.

  Tom Harper was at the door of the bar, looking for Denise. His eyes narrowed. The guy quickly let go of Denise’s waist. ‘Maybe later,’ he said, and walked away.

  ‘Was that guy giving you trouble, Denise?’ said Harper, approaching.

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ she said.

  ‘I bet that’s true.’

  ‘Yeah, well, thanks anyway. I don’t have any scruples about a guy helping me out.’

  ‘Pleased to hear it. Now let’s get us both a beer.’

  They sat close to each other at the bar, huddled over their drinks.

  ‘Any news yet?’

  ‘Not a thing. I’ve been working flat out, but we’ve found nothing to go on. It’s been a bad couple of days. Chasing shadows and dead ends. And he’s still out there somewhere. Don’t understand it, either. He’s gone quiet. No new kills, no communications. I don’t like it.’

  ‘You got your badge back,’ said Denise with a smile. ‘That’s good news, at least.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tom. ‘They had no choice. Either admit that some suspended cop had caught Redtop or put me back on the team. But it’s good to be officially back on Homicide. We got a lot of working out to do. A lot of good men got hurt.’

  ‘It sounded like a hell of a mess out there,’ Denise said.

  ‘Two FBI special agents were seriously injured. Asa Shelton and Isaac Spencer were burned pretty badly. Two guys from our team were hit bad. Garcia was dragged across the field after a pig caught on his webbing. Half his clothes burned into his skin. Mason’s face is a mess. Plenty of broken bones too.’

  ‘It’s lucky they’re alive,’ said Denise, her eyes caught on Harper’s all the way.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tom. ‘They’ve all got families, you know. Me and Eddie don’t and we missed the stampede. Is that called irony?’

  ‘No,’ said Denise. ‘It’s called luck.’

  Eddie Kasper had some minor burns from trying to help the others, but Mason was still in intensive care after the showdown at the hog farm. He wouldn’t ever be known for his looks again; the skin grafts wouldn’t disguise the fact that half his face had been burned away.

  ‘Do you know anything more yet?’ asked Denise. ‘Anything on who this guy Redtop is? Who was he?’

  ‘His name’s Maurice Macy. He jumped in the holding pond and it’s pretty difficult to drain. They only just got his body out, but they got his prints from Benny Marconi’s truck and he’s on file. He has history. And we found a link with Lottie. He was carrying Lucy James in a sheet. They found a match between fibres in Lottie’s hair and the sheet. Looks like Mo killed them both. Maybe he took more.’

  ‘Is there any link to Sebastian?’

  ‘This is where it gets interesting. Until two weeks ago, Mo Macy was being held in Manhattan Psychiatric Center. He’d taken girls before. Years ago. He never killed them, just kidnapped them and kept them captive, but he wasn’t sophisticated. They both escaped and went to the cops.’

  ‘He was on Ward’s Island? The same place Winston Carlisle was being treated?’

  ‘Exactly. It doesn’t make sense at all, but it’s a link.’

  ‘You think the American Devil was setting this guy up too, like he did with Winston?’

  ‘That was my first thought, but he’s not going to tell us now. We checked with Winston, and he doesn’t remember him either.’

  ‘So, what happened to Lucy?’

  ‘Yeah, poor kid. She’d been raped and suffocated. Maurice’s prints were all over her.’

  ‘Suffocated?’

  ‘There’s too many links to the American Devil to dismiss it entirely, but nothing concrete.’

  ‘Except a cherry blossom petal.’

  ‘Yeah, exactly. Mo was living in an apartment in a disused building. That’s where he kept the girls. He had hospital restraints on the bed. The forensic team are going over it, but it’ll take time before they assess everything they find.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Denise. She shook her head and took a sip of beer. ‘Anything new on the American Devil?’

  ‘Nothing. They’ve got his DNA from the Stanhope house, but the leads are all dead. I don’t understand why he’s stopped killing. Maybe he’s finished what he set out to do.’

  ‘It’s still puzzling’ said Denise. Then she sat up. ‘If Mo Macy kidnapped Lottie, it means that our American Devil profile wasn’t right. I should’ve spotted that sooner. The American Devil didn’t need those four days.’

  ‘I’ll get it altered.’

  ‘How are you, tough guy?’

  ‘Well, they’ve reinstated me; that’s enough.’

  ‘They’ve given you the lead back on the American Devil case?’

  ‘Lafayette offered. I declined. I want to work free, you know. Follow my instincts. I’m better working with one or two people. I’ve even tracked down the five locations in the city where you get winter-flowering cherry blossom and have got some ideas to work on.’

  Denise smiled. He was a good guy, for all his faults. He wasn’t just honest with others, he was honest with himself.

  Alone in a booth opposite, the man who’d hit on Denise sat and watched, sipping his bourbon quietly. He twirled Denise’s keys in his hand. It was so easy to slip a hand into someone’s bag while they were trying to avoid your cologne. He had what he wanted now: a way to give Tom Harper more pain than he could imagine. He was just waiting for the right opportunity. Sebastian leaned back. He felt sure the right opportunity was just on its way.

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Denise Levene’s Building

  December 2, 9.30 p.m.

  Sebastian sat in a hired green Ford. The window was down, the night air cold on his face as he watched the world go by. There was a creased photograph of Mo stuck to the centre of the dash, and every few seconds Sebastian looked at his little brother and his feelings of injustice swarmed over him. He’d never felt so alone. He needed Little Mo. Without Mo, what was it all for? He wanted to hurt now. Just lash out and hurt. He needed to kill. He looked up at Denise Levene’s apartment. It was time to get inside and give Tom Harper ’s little city girlfriend a shock.

  Sebastian knew he wasn’t wrong, just different - what did Freud say about it? ‘A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.’

  That’s all he was, a man in tune with his complexes. A legitimate search for happiness, no different from all such searches. No different at all. Pain would make him happy.

  He looked out again. Denise would be saying goodnight to the good Tom Harper across at the bar. Denise woul
d be thinking of getting home. The concierge would soon go to the bathroom again to snort some more low-quality cocaine and Sebastian would slip inside and find a nice warm corner to sit and wait. He wanted to disembowel her and tie her intestines round Harper’s neck.

  He opened the car door and stepped on to the sidewalk. He watched the concierge take a furtive look round and then head off down the hall. It was simple. Sebastian opened the lobby door with the key pass and walked to the stairs. Denise lived on the fourth floor. Within three minutes, he was standing outside her apartment. He felt the tingle that he always felt, just like the first time when he had stood in Chloe’s house. He put on a pair of latex gloves and slipped the key into the lock. He turned it and felt the mechanism click.

  Sebastian knew he could’ve made a great detective. He would be able to catch anyone and destroy them too. But the NYPD had turned him down. He’d failed the psychological assessment. Not good enough for them. His character was deemed unfit. He was not worth an NYPD ID card. Well, he was now, right? He was beating the whole of the NYPD and now he was going to take their best detective’s profiler. How ironic.

  Denise’s apartment was not what he’d expected. She came across as a controlled and ordered thinker. Her apartment was a mess. Sebastian didn’t like mess at all. It was a turn-off. He liked his women to be princesses. He didn’t like to see discarded clothes and pantyhose all across the floor, empty coffee cups and books scattered on every seat.

  He walked through each room in turn. ‘You’re a slut, Denise Levene. I had no idea.’ He opened the bathroom door. Hundreds of products cluttered every shelf, all of them without their lids. On the floor, a bath towel was lying damp and discarded. Sebastian shook his head. He would have to teach her how to behave properly, like a real princess. Then he would kill her.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Denise Levene’s Building

  December 2, 10.50 p.m.

  Denise Levene was about a hundred metres up the road, walking towards the apartment. Tom Harper was at her side. She felt they’d made a connection at the bar. Harper was lightening up. She’d enjoyed herself, too.

  ‘It’s nice to walk where there are no TV stations and microphones being thrust in my face,’ said Tom, looking around.

  ‘Well, you’re always welcome: my street’s nice and friendly.’ They reached the steps to her building. ‘This is me,’ she said and looked up at him. ‘I’d like to do that again sometime.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Me too. I enjoyed it. Good to talk.’

  ‘Yeah, good to talk.’

  Tom waved at her and wandered away down the road. Denise watched him for a second or two and then went up to the door. The concierge buzzed the door and waved, and Denise walked through to the lift. She stood there thinking about Tom. About how far he had come in such a short amount of time, and how far he had to go. Lisa or not, she knew that he was still a long way from being ready to move forward with his life.

  Out of the lift Denise wandered down the hallway to her apartment. She stood outside the door and opened her bag. She searched for her keys for a moment, but she couldn’t find them. ‘Shit,’ she muttered. She was just about to walk right back down to the lift to fetch the concierge when she reached out for the door handle. It wouldn’t be the first time that Daniel had shut their apartment door without locking it. She turned the handle and it opened. She shook her head.

  Inside her apartment, she switched on the light and winced at the mess. Daniel needed more housetraining. Another job for her list. There was an unusual smell in the air, faint but strange. Denise hung up her bag, took off her coat and placed it on a hanger. She pulled off her shoes and pressed the door shut with her backside. It clicked shut and she turned and bolted it. Daniel had taken Fahrenheit to keep him company up at the senator’s cabin in the hills. No doubt he’d ring later and say he’d lost his keys somewhere. She’d have to find them, but looking at the apartment she realized that would not be easy. Maybe tomorrow she’d find the time to clear up the mess.

  Denise walked through to the bathroom and turned on the shower. She undressed where she stood, folding her suit on the chair and putting her blouse and underwear into the linen basket.

  She stepped into the shower and closed the glass door of the cubicle. The water was as hot as she could stand it and cascaded in heavy, thick streams down her body. Her eyes closed as she flushed the city grime from her pores. It was the only way to end a long day.

  Sebastian listened to the falling water. It made a lovely sound. Water was special to Sebastian. He’d grown up by the river. Water was his friend. He opened the bathroom cupboard and emerged from his hiding place beside a stack of towels and un-ironed clothes. He saw Denise through the glass, the water running down her body, her skin shining and clear. He felt a surge of heat and moved into the room. He took the wooden seat from beside the door and pushed her suit to the floor. Then he sat down to watch.

  Maybe it was a noise, or maybe she saw shadows flicker across the ceiling. For some reason Denise opened her eyes and turned. The shock was like a well-placed thump to her solar plexus and she gulped, physically doubling up against the shower wall. Her whole body danced with the flood of adrenalin. The stranger from the bar sat just outside the shower cubicle on a wooden chair, his legs wide apart, leaning back as if relaxed and staring with wide eyes. He was staring directly at her. And he was smiling broadly. She cowered and tried to scream, but the sound was a trembling wheeze rather than a loud alarm. Her legs weakened and buckled and her arms covered herself as if it was her modesty that she needed to protect. It wasn’t. The man had one of her bath towels in his hand and was shredding it into long strips with a knife.

  ‘Ever been hogtied, Denise?’ said Sebastian. ‘I’m the American Devil, by the way. I think you already know me well.’

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  East Harlem

  December 2, 11.20 p.m.

  Tom Harper had wandered slowly back to his apartment. He was full of thoughts and ideas, some of which were about the case, some not. The thing that really kept him thinking was the idea that Mo and Sebastian were somehow linked.

  Tom walked up the steps to his building. He wanted to forget all about the case for a few hours. There was an envelope taped to his front door, with his name written across the front of it. His heart started beating. He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and put them on. Then he opened the letter.

  Dear Detective Harper,

  Are you afraid of dying, Detective? I’ve seen the look on their faces when they are about to die. If you kill them slowly enough, they reveal their secrets. Did you know that? They are at their most beautiful just as they die. What will your face look like, I wonder? Shit-scared like Williamson? Proud like Elizabeth Seale?

  I’m after you, now, Detective Harper. Just you. Williamson never was good enough, but I’m going to make an example out of you.

  All my girls died in their own particular way. I guess, Detective Harper, that I’m more afraid of dying than any of them. More afraid of loving too.

  Artists are like that, unable to love, afraid to die, outcasts from life’s feast. We live for our work, nothing else. My sculpture is complete but for one thing and that’s you, Detective. I want your blood to mingle with theirs. We’ll meet soon, I’m sure of that.

  I know you like Denise, Detective, I know you’re going to miss her and you are going to try to find her. I know what it’s like to miss them. It’s like nothing else in the world. I want you to feel pain, Tom Harper.

  Think of my taking Denise as a necessary preparation for your ending. First, I will tenderize you with pain and guilt, then I will cut you up and serve you on a plate.

  Yours,

  Sebastian

  Harper swallowed hard. He felt the crawl of fear over his skin. He had not felt this terror before. Not personally. Now he knew what it felt like. Sebastian was after Denise.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Harper’s Apartment

  Dec
ember 2, 11.25 p.m.

  The back stairway was painted dark green and echoed to the smallest sound. Harper sprinted down the stairs, jumping the flights of steps in one leap, his footfalls rebounding off the walls and climbing high into the building. He already had his cell phone in his hand and at the bottom of the steps he called Denise. He stood there, breathing heavily, listening to the phone ringing and ringing. ‘Please pick up, damn you. Pick up!’

  No one did. Harper looked up the street. How was he going to get to Denise’s in time? He could get a cab, take a car, but the subway would be the quickest of all. It was a few stops. He tried to calculate quickly and was caught in a moment of indecision. Then he darted towards the subway, a look of panic etched across his face.

  All the time he intoned her name like a prayer. Denise. Denise. Denise. Perhaps Denise didn’t know yet. Perhaps Sebastian hadn’t managed to get to her. God help her! As he ran towards the subway, he called Eddie.

  ‘No time for talking, Eddie. Sebastian’s gone for Denise. Get a patrol to her apartment fast.’ He knew Eddie would be on to the duty supervisor immediately.

  He headed down into the subway and stood on the train, staring straight ahead and shaking in the bold yellow lights. There was nothing worse than fearing for someone you cared for, when your mind could hardly dare to admit that they were only in danger because of you. His shirt was drenched in sweat.

  He was trying to think. Maybe it was not too late. Maybe Sebastian had made a mistake. Maybe, he should’ve seen this coming. Maybe, maybe, maybe, ran through his head with the rhythm of the train.

  He couldn’t believe how slow the journey was. He couldn’t believe he was so impotent. He just tensed and tried to remain focused. She needed him focused. She needed him, period. A busker got on at the next station, carrying a guitar. He stood in the middle of the train and strummed and sang. Some John Lennon number about peace.