by Oliver Stark
‘You know that those things will kill you, don’t you?’
Marty looked up at Nick. ‘Yeah, I know.’
Nick felt someone or something move within the corridors of his mind. Footsteps, heavy and distant. He was coming now. Nick looked up to Marty, his face contorted with fear. ‘He’s coming, Doctor. I can feel him.’
Nick’s voice suddenly dropped an octave and a deep baritone voice said, ‘You know what the motto of St Sebastian is, Doctor? Beauty constant under torture. Show nothing, remain beautiful, whatever the pain.’
Nick removed his hand from his pocket and raised a clenched fist up before him. ‘I can sometimes keep him away. Sometimes I can.’ Marty looked across — dark red blood was streaming from his hand, through the fingers and knuckles and on to the table and carpet. Marty rushed across and took hold of Nick’s arm. ‘Stop it! What the hell are you doing? Jesus!’
He pulled open Nick’s bloody fist and a handful of sharp flat-headed nails clattered on to the glass table and across the floor, peppering the pale carpet with spots of blood. ‘What the fuck are you doing, Nick?’ Marty said, staring hard at Nick, who was concentrating with all his strength. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Resisting,’ said Nick. ‘Resisting him.’
Chapter Sixty-One
Marty Fox’s Suite
November 28, 11.45 a.m.
Marty waited until he saw Nick disappear across the street, then he stood up. His shirt was sticking to him. He pulled off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled it off and threw it in the trash. Then he pulled the New York Times out of the trash. He’d seen the killer’s profile that morning in the paper but ignored it. Now he wanted to know. He read the 500-word description. His pulse started racing. Nick was a good match.
He pressed through to his PA. ‘Get me a new shirt, will you, Jane.’
‘I’m sorry, Dr Fox, he pushed right past me.’
‘Yeah. I… Don’t worry. And put me through to the police.’
‘The police?’
Jane paused and then she said she would do as he asked.
Just then, Marty’s cell phone vibrated. He took his jacket and searched the pocket. He pulled out his phone and pressed to read the text. An image appeared on his screen. He stared at it in confusion. What did she do that for? It was a picture of his wife. She was outside their house, getting into her car. It was earlier that day, he was sure of it. She was wearing what she had on that morning. White trousers and a purple blouse. What did she send that for? He looked at the message details — it wasn’t from her cell.
Marty put his phone down on the desk and tried to think. Then the cell vibrated again and clicked against the glass. Another text arrived. Marty opened it. It was another picture. His wife, getting out of her car at her office. Again, it was a picture taken earlier in the day. A fear was dawning on Marty as he looked at the screen. Then another text arrived. There was his lovely wife at work. Another text came quickly after. This time she was looking directly into the camera and smiling. Marty’s hand was shaking. His phone was vibrating constantly as photograph after photograph appeared. All of his wife, all from earlier in the day. All from someone standing close to her.
Jane called back through. ‘I’ve got the police on the line. Can I patch you through?’
‘Jane, that guy who just left; the guy who calls himself Nick Smith — he didn’t say anything to you, did he?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You ever give him my cell phone number?’
‘Sure. At the first session. Just your work phone, not your private number.’
‘Thank you, Jane.’
‘Can I patch you through now?’
‘Sure.’
Marty looked down at his wife’s smiling face then put his cell phone down. It continued to buzz with a life of its own. He picked up the office phone, his voice catching dry in his throat. ‘Sorry, officer, I’ve made a mistake. It’s fine. I had a client who was refusing to leave, but he’s gone now. Sorry for wasting your time.’ He put the phone down quickly.
Five more photographs arrived. Nick Smith had been following her right until he started out to Marty’s office. Marty’s heart was pounding. Nick or, worse, Sebastian had been stalking his wife. And he was feeling the guilt himself. Marty felt his cowardice leaching the colour from his skin.
He looked down at the last photograph of his wife, a woman he’d lied to and betrayed for fifteen years. And now someone was threatening her life. Tears formed in Marty’s eyes like long-lost relatives arriving at a funeral. He was a cheap, lying, adulterous bastard, but his heart yearned for her like a dog. He wanted to howl. He looked at her familiar face and realized why he was crying. He was looking at the only thing on earth that he really loved and wondering why the hell he was killing her.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Dresden Home
November 28, 11.55 a.m.
Dee had never meant to get married. It was always part of her long-term idea of what she’d do, but she’d never meant to marry Nick. Somehow, she’d found herself at an altar standing in front of a priest knowing both that this was her destiny and that she didn’t want it at all. She cried all through her wedding night. Women like her just didn’t have the heart to fight against it. She presumed that these doubts were normal, that marriage was, for all women, a compromise between personal dreams and the needs of men.
Her problem over the years, as she saw it, was that she was loyal. Faithfulness was her cardinal virtue. It was worth more to her than love. Faith was her gold standard and she expected it from herself.
And faith was a good thing, wasn’t it? Faith was good in itself. Dee felt that her faith was tested every day after the children were born. She spoke to her priest and he agreed that faith was a good thing. He saw her bruised arms, he saw her hurt. ‘Have faith,’ he said. ‘Stick with it.’
On the morning that the papers arrived, Nick was out with the children. There was a cherry tree wood a cycle ride away and Nick sometimes liked to spend time with them there. Dee had sat in the kitchen with the weak wintry sun touching her hair and her face. The paper lay open on the table as she sipped her tea. That was when she came across the police profile of the man they called the American Devil, and her faith finally slipped.
The thoughts that flew about her head seemed terrible and impossible. Dee stood at the window, her face taut with pain, biting her nails off one by one. Her hand encircled her waist and gripped her skin until her nails were embedded deep in her side. In her head, she went through every detail of the profile. It all fit.
It all fit so closely that it might’ve been written by her. She went through the details again and again, doubt springing up in accusation, denial breathing fire on every new memory. Her mind was a rush of tiny fragments — tiny blood spots, dirt under his fingernails, mood swings, long absences, violence and sentimentality, perversion, rape, manipulation, drinking, cleaning the car. He was ticking every box.
Every box, that was, except the four-day absence from home. Dee checked her calendar. She had been at home and so had Nick. It was a doubt large enough to make her feel stupid, large enough to make an excuse for herself.
For two hours, while Nick was out chasing his two children through the woods, Dee bit her nails, grabbed her skin and felt her mind contort. One detail didn’t fit, but several did. She had to call the police number just to check, just to be reassured. Dee picked up the phone and began to dial. Her mind was still uncertain. Faith was turning somersaults in her heart. The line started to ring and she felt like a guilty child, her pulse racing, her breath short. In fact, Dee was terrified.
Then she saw Nick appear at the end of the driveway. He was carrying Michael under one arm. Michael was giggling and laughing with his father. Susan was on his shoulders, thumping his head as though he was a monster. She was screaming with delight and Nick was roaring like a troll.
Dee broke out a smile. She felt the muscles in her face ache from the tension. There he was, playing with
his children. William and Susan with their father. He wasn’t a killer, he wasn’t a bad man, he was her children’s father. Nick was right, sometimes she did get all confused in her head. Maybe she was going mad. The line rang once more and Dee replaced the handset. Once again in Dee’s life, faith won.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Missing Persons Unit
November 28, 12.05 p.m.
A hooker somehow disappeared and her kids had half starved in a project that housed 3,500 people. So much for neighbours looking out for each other. So much for equal opportunity policing. The neighbours even said they heard crying and screaming from the girls, but that was normal in the projects. No need to interfere and find yourself facing a teenager with a gun. Shut your own door and block your ears.
Tom stared again at the image of Lottie Bixley’s face. For four days, her children suffered on their own. For those four days, she was a missing person, not a murder victim. He logged on to the National Missing Persons database. He was looking for something. Anything at all. He typed in Lottie’s details. Within about half an hour, he’d found another missing girl called Elisa Dale. He opened her details.
Female, 110 pounds, Caucasian, nineteen years old, brown hair. Suspected prostitute.
He scrolled down to her address and considered it for a moment. The date was June 14, 2006. Nearly eighteen months before Lottie went missing. He looked at the brief description. She went out to work the street and never returned. That was it. No investigation. Case closed.
Tom’s curiosity clicked into gear. He narrowed his search location and dates and began to find other young women.
Within an hour, Harper had pulled together three photographs of young women in front of him. Two Caucasian, one Hispanic, all in their late teens or early twenties, all of a slight build. All hookers living in East Harlem. All missing without a trace in the last twenty-four months.
None of these cases ever reached the homicide squad. None were investigated. Hookers were not considered high priority. Somebody somewhere just wrote a report and filed it. What the hell had happened to all these young women?
Harper wanted to push on with this missing persons thing further. He got a map up on the internet and started to pinpoint the addresses and the points at which the three girls went missing. He looked at the pattern in front of him. If these were homicides and not missing persons, this would be a major investigation. Maybe something went wrong with Lottie. Maybe her killer never intended to dump her. A body causes problems.
Deep into the database, staring at face after face of lost people, Harper felt suddenly very lonely. But something was bothering him. Missing hookers got shit while the rich girls had hundreds of detectives assigned to their cases. No one gave a damn about the girls up in the projects who made up the numbers.
Women who just seemed to disappear.
It took hours of going through the files to try to piece the jigsaw together. He had all the last known locations of five missing hookers across several different precincts going back four years pinned on a map. The missing hookers obviously congregated around the areas of poverty and prostitution. They couldn’t all be just missing, could they? These girls were disappearing. Slowly, silently, invisibly — one after the other. And no one gave a damn. Deep in his gut was the churning feeling that this was somehow connected to the American Devil. The single cherry blossom petal was enough to keep him going. Harper clicked on to open cases. The face of Lucy James stared out at him. He read the report.
Lucy James was not a hooker, but she had gone missing in Central Park late at night, just like Lottie Bixley. Tom read the details. She had been with her boyfriend in the park. Then she had been abducted. He read the boyfriend’s statement. He said that they were out walking. She ran away from him into the bushes as some kind of tease and she was snatched. There was blood on the ground. Then something sprang out at Harper and he felt a rush of adrenalin. He re-read the boyfriend’s statement and there it was.
‘Along East Drive, we passed a guy sitting on a bench. He was a regular guy, tall, strong-looking, wearing a red rollneck and a black coat. He had a suitcase by his side. I remember that because Lucy asked him if he was going on vacation.’
Harper called Eddie directly. His voice sounded wired. ‘Eddie, did you pull that guy from the 7-Eleven yet?’
‘Just about to. Why?’
‘I was looking into the missing persons angle. I found a young college girl who’s disappeared. Last seen two nights ago. She’s not a hooker like Lottie, but she went missing in Central Park.’
‘Not from Harlem?’ asked Eddie
‘This girl was near enough to Lottie’s last known location down on East Drive.’
‘Any details? What’s her name?’
‘Lucy James.’
‘So what’s the connection?’
‘The boyfriend saw a guy sitting on a bench just before Lucy disappeared. And guess what? He was wearing a red rollneck and had a suitcase with him. That spark any memories for you?’
‘A fucking suitcase! He said he kept his laundry in it. He was also the last person to see Lottie alive.’
‘The scene at Lottie’s dump site had wheel marks,’ said Harper. ‘About the width of a suitcase. That’s how he did it! How he moves these girls from one place to another without being seen. He puts the girls in a suitcase. Shit. A fucking suitcase.’
‘I’ll call the team,’ said Eddie. ‘Maybe it’ll cross-reference with some sightings we’ve had for the American Devil. We’ve got thousands and thousands of statements but we weren’t ever looking for a suitcase.’
‘We’ve got to get back to the 7-Eleven, right now.’
Harper grabbed his coat and made for the door.
Chapter Sixty-Four
7-Eleven
November 28, 12.45 p.m.
The wipers on Eddie’s red Pontiac struggled against a scuzzy grey sleet as they drove at high speed up to Harlem through the post-vacation traffic. Shoppers laden with bags from the pre-Christmas sales hunkered down into their coats, carelessly stepping into the stream of cars and cabs as they hurried to the subway.
Up in East Harlem, Eddie slammed the car hard against the kerbstone and both cops rushed out towards the 7-Eleven. The door jangled and hit a wire stack of magazines but no one appeared at the counter. ‘Police! Can we get someone out here now!’
Benny Marconi, in a different coloured Hawaiian shirt and khaki pants, appeared from the back, pushing a kickstool with his toe.
‘What’s the fucking noise for?’
‘We got to talk to you, now,’ said Harper. ‘Your man, the big guy who works here, where is he?’
The short guy stood up and looked them up and down. ‘Not again, for fuck’s sake.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s out. What’s it to you?’
‘Listen, Mr Marconi, we’re investigating a homicide case and we need to speak to the big guy. Where is he?’
Benny laughed out loud. ‘Are you kidding me? Fuck you! We don’t hear nothing out here. We don’t know nothing. All I know is he’s not here.’
‘I promise we ain’t kidding you,’ said Eddie, moving up tight to the storekeeper. ‘I can have twenty detectives tear the store to pieces, close you down for so long you ain’t never gonna open again.’
‘You think the fucking shakedown is gonna work on me? Forget it. Show me a warrant. You ain’t got a thing. Go find him yourself.’
Harper turned quickly. ‘What name does he go by here?’
‘He’s called Redtop, on account of his preference for wearing the same top every day of his life. I gave him the name.’
‘What about his real name for payroll?’
‘I pay him cash. He’s called Mo. I don’t know any more.’
‘You got an address?’
‘No. Don’t know where he lives. I pay him peanuts and I pay him daily. He’s only just started. He’s the cheapest labour I ever had so I ain’t asking questions.’
‘
You want to be an accessory after the fact in a major homicide case, Mr Marconi? Now, give us his address.’
The man went into the back store and came out with a ledger. He put it on the desk and turned it to them.
‘This is his employment record. It’s all I got.’ On the page was the name Mo and a straight line under the address. ‘I don’t know where this man lives or even if he has a place to live. He carries a laundry bag everywhere, maybe he lives out of that.’
Harper handed him a card. ‘The moment you hear from this guy, you call me. He could be a killer.’
Benny laughed. ‘He’s not a killer. He can’t even swat a fly.’
‘Call us,’ said Tom.
They didn’t know if this had anything to do with the American Devil but Harper felt this was the nearest they’d been since the beginning. They just had to find this guy now. How hard could it be to find a man like that in Harlem?
They walked out of the store. ‘I’ve got a team coming up to watch the 7-Eleven. What do you say we do, Tom?’ asked Eddie.
Tom wasn’t sure. He stopped for a moment. ‘The thing that’s bothering me is this. If he’s got Lucy James hidden somewhere in the city and we spook him, she could starve to death. We got to tread carefully. Can you get any more bodies up here to walk the streets?’
‘I’ll call in some favours,’ said Eddie.
Chapter Sixty-Five
East Harlem
November 28, 3.00 p.m.
‘Here’s your guy,’ Eddie said as he tossed a folder into Harper’s lap. ‘This drawing is based on the description given by Lucy James’s boyfriend.’ The police drawing was a close enough fit to the man they’d seen at the store. The big guy with the red turtleneck. They had an ID but no name.
The next part was harder — finding someone in a city of eight million. Mo was likely to be on foot. As far as they knew he didn’t have a vehicle so he was likely to be only a short distance from the 7-Eleven and Washington House. All they had to do was get a team together and start asking the streetwalkers and searching the areas in the radius.