by Oliver Stark
‘Denise.’
‘You can’t give up on this one, Tom. Not just yet. Not now. Listen, I went through my notes. I’ve been working on the profile. I know you say you’re not working the case, but we can still help. We’ve already done some good work, but there are some errors and our analysis doesn’t go far enough.’
‘Denise.’
‘If we use my earlier profile, we’re looking for a married salesman with a high school education. Too many people. We need to be more precise. Until we’re precise, no one’s going to recognize this guy.’
‘Denise,’ he said for the third time.
‘I know who I am, Tom. Now put some coffee on, we’ve got work to do here. You and I could get somewhere on this one. We can pass our profile to Blue Team and see if it helps. Then we leave it, all right? We can call it quits and walk away. But we’ve got to give them what we know.’
Harper smiled. She was sure determined and he liked it. And what’s more, she was right. He went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. He stood at the door and watched as she took off her coat. It sparkled with melting snowflakes.
He put the coffee on the table and she sat down. ‘I’ve been up all night, but we’re going to have to go through this line by line. I want a perfect picture of the killer. By the time we finish, we need to be able to determine where he buys his socks. You ready?’
‘I’m ready,’ Harper said. He had a sceptical smile on his face but Denise was more than ready for his attitude.
She opened her notebook. ‘My profile was all right, but it’s general. I’ve tried to add some specifics. Let’s see what you think.’
Tom nodded.
‘To begin with,’ she said, ‘we’re dealing with an SSSK: a sexually sadistic serial killer. That tells us one important thing — SSSKs don’t stop until they’re caught or killed. The ultimate fantasy for the SSSK is control. The collection of trophies is an example of possession and the expression of the fantasy. The taking of the body parts indicates a need to possess the dead as well as the living. The killer needs trophies because he does not feel adequate with women. And we’ll see this in his work and home life.’
Tom sat down next to her. She was a scientist, but she was homing in on the kind of person the killer might appear to be from the perspective of his wife or colleagues. It was promising.
‘These are my profile notes,’ said Denise, and handed him her notebook. Tom flicked over the pages.
‘He’s a man with two sides, a kind considerate man who has violent mood swings. He might even hit his wife, but be overly sentimental with children. He has a fixation with being loved because it’s the only way to fulfil his needs, but he will not be sexually active with his wife.’
Tom smiled. ‘You’re describing Average Joe, Denise. He’s a good guy who sometimes gets angry, he loves his wife but loses his temper, and they’ve lost touch with each other.’
‘It’s not Average Joe,’ said Denise. ‘Listen carefully. His mood swings are violent. He will be sentimental with his wife at times and then get angry. He will enjoy hurting her. Enjoy it because it allows him to control how she thinks and feels. That’s what he wants. He wants to own the narrative. He sees himself as a martyr who loves too much, too intensely, who is not loved enough in return. The unusual feature of this case is that he’s gone for sophisticated victim types — maybe prostitutes as well, but we’ll leave that for now. These high society girls are the unobtainable angels. Either this is because he’s got this whore/ Madonna thing going on or it’s something practical. My thinking is that he indulges himself with these girls to prove he’s not the loser he inwardly knows he is. He’s living out some fantasy life in which he is a part of these women’s lives. If Lottie Bixley is his, then it indicates that there is a strong need to feed the impulse to kill. He might have two modes — an organized mode and a disorganized mode. I’ve never seen that in the same killer before.’
‘Or he’s just trying to fuck with the profilers,’ said Tom, sipping coffee.
‘It’s not out of the question after what he did to set up Winston Carlisle. Or it could be more banal than that. If I’m right about Lottie Bixley, then he also had access to a house for four days in November when the family were away. He might have been alone at home and needed someone quick — so he took a hooker.’
Harper nodded. ‘The Lottie connection is very slight, but you might have something, Denise, so go on.’
‘Okay. He drives a car, possibly a blue car. He’s in his late thirties or early forties and is clean shaven with dark or greying hair. He has an interest in poetry and art, again because it makes him feel like less of a loser. He likes going to museums like the Frick and MoMA. They make him feel intelligent and sophisticated. He lives somewhere off the Triborough Bridge, possibly in the North Queens area, and works in and around North Manhattan, but he’s on the move. That’s why he’s less worried about being identified. I think he sees lots of different people all the time. He owns a garage or workshop of some sort and is often away from home for extended periods in the evening. He needs to be in East Harlem and on Ward’s Island more frequently than other locations. There’s a reason for that. I don’t know what it is, but it needs looking at. He buys expensive fashion gifts for his wife. Shoes, scarves, jewellery. She will not know where these items come from. His childhood was somewhere rural, but he will rarely speak about it. He also has a problem with the police. He wants to prove himself better than all of you, so I would suggest that at some point he will likely have applied for the police department, either in New York or elsewhere. He will have been rejected at the psychological assessment. He will sometimes come home in different clothes from the ones he was wearing in the morning. He may leave items of women’s jewellery or underwear in his car. In the last month his strange behaviour will have escalated rapidly. His family will have noticed his preoccupation. He will clean his car thoroughly at the weekend. He will vacuum the boot of the car and shampoo the interior. His shoes will sometimes have mud on them. There may be small scratches on his face, neck or hands. He may come home with a smell of unfamiliar perfume. He will have dirt under his fingernails. He has hunted and skinned and gutted animals before, so he’s not afraid of cutting. My guess, Tom, is that his wife will know who he is. She must know.’
Harper listened intently. Denise was wired. This was far beyond anything she’d done before. And it was compelling. ‘Where did it all come from, Denise?’
‘It takes a while to come together. It’s all based on evidence. Your evidence. All the stuff that came back from each team. I just painted a picture — the kind of picture that his wife would see. You were wrong about my interests, Tom. I don’t care about his psychology, I care that he gets caught. This might help. What do you think?’
‘It’s very good.’
‘Even though it’s written by a civilian?’
‘Even so. It reads good. Shit, Denise, it’s very good. You’ve brought him to life.’
‘You’re not going to call this a load of psychobabble?’
‘Not this time.’
‘You think they’ll use it?’
‘I guess that they will.’
‘So,’ said Denise, ‘do we know where he buy his socks?’
Tom looked at her. ‘Yeah, we know. He doesn’t buy them — his wife does.’
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The Met
November 27, 10.35 a.m.
Straight after they agreed all aspects of the profile, Denise and Tom left his apartment and continued their conversation over breakfast in a coffee house for another couple of hours. By the end of that time Tom was convinced he should do something with Denise’s profile.
He called Eddie Kasper. He couldn’t meet him at the station house, so they agreed to meet on the steps of the Met, a short walk from Harper’s apartment and a shorter walk to the murder sites on the Upper East Side.
When Denise and Harper arrived at the elegant steps leading up to the stone facade of the Met
ropolitan Museum of Art they stood for a moment and looked at each other in the winter sunlight. Tom was preoccupied. He felt guilty about his late night dance, the subsequent kissing. It was supposed to show him he was over Lisa, but it had just brought her back to life. He still felt connected. He needed to get out of the deep tracks in his own mind and there was only one way he knew — Denise Levene’s way: an elastic band. He snapped it hard against his wrist and looked up at the cool grey facade of the museum. A text message interrupted him.
‘It’s Eddie,’ he said.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s inside pretending he loves art. It’s a surefire way to get a date.’
‘What happened to the last love of his life?’
‘Like a firework — they burn bright, but die out quick.’
Tom and Denise waited in the lobby until Eddie Kasper drifted across in a sports jacket. He was smiling.
‘Look the fuck at this,’ he said, holding up a small piece of paper. ‘I got three numbers here inside of ten minutes. This place is like some secret garden of available hotties. Why you never tell me about this place, Harps?’
‘Just as long as they didn’t ask you about the paintings,’ said Tom.
‘Fuck that, I’ve got that critical look down to a fine art. I suck my cheeks and say, well, you know, you got to ask yourself, what was the artist trying to say, you know, we got to throw our minds way back to understand all of this.’
‘Nice threads,’ said Denise, smiling at the jacket.
‘You offering your number too?’ Eddie held out his scrap of paper.
‘Only when you need therapy, which is going to be soon.’
They walked across the polished stone floors until they found a quiet room, where they sat in a line on the bench.
Harper shuffled for a moment. ‘Thanks for hearing me out a moment. Denise has been researching and working up a profile.’
Kasper nodded, ‘Least someone has. FBI profilers say that our pattern killer is too indistinct. They won’t give us a line in case it’s wrong and we point the finger their way. There’s nothing they say we can go public on. And we’ve got nothing new on the case down at the station house. The new lead, Detective Lassiter, is still clearing his throat.’
Harper half smiled. ‘Listen, they’re wrong. Denise has a profile of the guy. It’s very good. It’s based on his behaviour patterns. Imagine what his wife would see and you’ll get the picture. She’ll see a violent, preoccupied and secretive husband who shows small signs of the kills. He’ll have dirty fingernails, scratches, blood stains, and he’ll make frequent changes of clothes and stay away from home.’
Eddie looked hard at Tom. ‘You serious, Tom?’
‘Yeah, it’s a good profile.’
‘No, I mean about praising someone else for casework? Are you ill or something?’
‘Hey, I praise when it’s due, which isn’t often.’
‘Denise,’ said Eddie, ‘you need a medal for getting a good word out of this sonofabitch. Can I be the first to congratulate you?’
‘Knock it off, Eddie. Just tell us — do you think you can get Lafayette and Lassiter to go public with this? The killer’s wife knows him. She’ll recognize him. It’s a chance.’
‘We publish these telltale signs of the killer and wait until she calls? Is that what you’re saying?’ said Eddie.
‘Yeah. Exactly.’
‘I’ll try for you both. You know Lafayette thinks Denise is a good thing and Lassiter will want to look like he’s making a difference, so it might be okay.’
‘We also think that there’s more to find out about where Lottie was held for four days before she was murdered. I want to look into it,’ said Tom.
‘Why? Lottie Bixley’s got nothing to do with Sebastian.’
‘We don’t know that for sure. I found cherry blossom at the scene, which is something. In the profile, we suggest that maybe the family were away from home for the four days Lottie was held.’
‘That’s a long shot,’ said Eddie.
‘Just go with it,’ said Tom. ‘Listen, I went back through the case in my mind and we didn’t even start to do work on Lottie’s murder. We were preoccupied with the Kitty situation. Things got messy and then I was off the case. We need to speak to some people who knew Lottie. There might be some play in checking out her last movements.’
‘Maybe,’ said Eddie. ‘Denise, what do you think?’
‘We need to look into it,’ said Denise. ‘My take is that Lottie might have been an opportunity he couldn’t bear to miss, so he may have made mistakes there that we haven’t spotted.’
‘Okay,’ said Kasper. ‘I get it that Lottie is a different package. You’re saying it’s like someone likes real fine food but sometimes they just want a good old hamburger.’
‘Yeah, something like that,’ said Denise.
‘For some reason,’ said Tom, ‘whoever killed Lottie held her for four days and then discarded her quickly. We got to figure what happened.’
‘So we need to go speak to some hookers,’ said Eddie. ‘See if we can get anyone talking.’
On the way over to Lottie Bixley’s last known location, Eddie Kasper stopped at the station house to pass Denise’s profile to Lafayette at Blue Team. Captain Lafayette looked at it gratefully and promised to consider it carefully. He agreed that they needed something to big-up the department’s efforts after the debacle with Winston Carlisle and this would keep the hungry mouths at One Police Plaza quiet for a day or two.
If Lafayette could get the executives to agree to the profile, every newspaper would run the short 500-word description covering her key points. The headline would read: ‘Is This Your Husband Or Boyfriend?’ There would be many across New York having sleepless nights.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Marty Fox’s Home
November 27, 2.05 p.m.
Marty Fox sat in his bedroom waiting for his wife to emerge from the bathroom. He’d set up a nice early lunch for them both in a quiet restaurant that he knew she liked and now they were going to do something they hadn’t done in about ten years — slip off into bed for the afternoon. Marty drank a few glasses of good wine with his meal and their conversation had turned all nostalgic — there was a time when the only woman he wanted was her, and somehow he’d remembered it as they sipped their red wine and talked about the years of struggle and good fun. Good years. Very good years. Just a little distant now.
Sitting alone, Marty was finding it difficult to concentrate. The photograph in the paper shocked the life out of him. Kitty Hunyardi, her name was, but Marty was sure it was the same girl that he’d seen on Nick’s cell phone. What the hell did it mean? He felt terrified by the prospect that Nick was involved in Kitty’s death somehow, but he kept on trying to convince himself he was mistaken. The last session with his patient, Nick had been too fucking weird. Maybe his memory was confused. Marty didn’t like weird. He liked categories so that he could file these things away, far away from his conscious mind. But he couldn’t file Nick. All that stuff about the girl called Chloe and her apparent murder. The photographs of Kitty. It was too much for Marty. Way too much. Fantasy or reality? Marty didn’t know. And then the reports of Kitty’s murder in the papers and on the news, and suddenly everywhere he fucking looked, he could see the news about a guy who stalked and followed women. A guy who was unstable. A guy who could be Nick.
Marty Fox stroked his forehead slowly. The word ‘coincidence’ was a very reassuring one in these circumstances. Yeah, he’d been running that same word around his head for a few days now. Sure, a coincidence: two unrelated events that seem connected but are only similar by chance. That’s all it was. An alignment of unconnected events. They must happen a million times a day. It was nothing at all to worry about. Nothing.
Marty started to yank off his socks. His feet had that yellowing look of a life spent too long in the dark. He looked up at the decor. Wallpaper borders of twisting roses and fake brass wall lamps. His wife�
��s taste was not his own, for sure, but he’d let her indulge herself. He’d passed on the responsibility. Maybe he shouldn’t have given up like that — let her have the house. Maybe that was where they began going their separate ways. Sitting there with his yellow feet, and the dizzy feeling of being overfed under the light of fake brass lamps, he felt like a failed car salesman having a bad day at a cheap motel.
Life had become a series of disappointments welded together with the hope of an affair. That’s what Marty had done to himself. Sure, for a long time he’d thought he was a smart ass to be getting so much off-limits sex, he’d even enjoyed fooling his wife, but all he was doing was pouring good old gasoline into a leaking tank.
He’d loved her so much, too. She’d been able to funnel the idiot inside him somewhere good. Without her, there was no way he would’ve got his qualifications let alone set up his practice in New York City.
Why had he thrown it away? Or, moreover, when had he thrown it away? The shock of Nick had made Marty melancholy. It’d also made him run to the one place he’d only ever wanted to be.
‘I never was good enough for you, babe,’ he said to himself in the room. ‘Maybe I just became the asshole I always thought I was.’
Marty wondered for a moment if anything in life was really and truly redeemable. If the betrayals could be undone, somehow, his failures and mistakes wiped away with a gleaming new beginning. He pulled off his trousers. He didn’t think so.
The worst thing was the fact that while his beautiful, far-too-good-for-him wife was refreshing herself in the bathroom, approaching their promised intimacy without bitterness or recriminations, all he could think of was Nick and a girl called Kitty.
Maybe Nick just happened to be around the same Kitty, maybe he wasn’t a psycho killer. Marty had even considered going to the cops. Yeah, and getting caught up in a whole world of shit he’d rather keep clear of. Instead of going to the cops, he did a little research. He wanted to know more about the girl called Chloe. He didn’t know whether Nick had somehow been involved in Chloe’s murder or if he’d grown up near to it and kind of fantasized about it. His curiosity had got the better of him, though. He’d spent a few hours looking up the case on the internet. He wished he hadn’t. It took him a while to track it down, but he found it in the archives of the New York Times. The story had hit the nationals it was so gruesome. And that was when the tension really started to get to Marty.