Death by Pride: A Kyle Callahan Mystery

by Mark McNease

  “You can let us off here,” D said, leaning forward to speak through the partition.

  The cab pulled over. “I’ve got it,” D said, taking a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet and handing it to the driver. He threw the door open and stepped out, not waiting for change.

  “This is where you live?” Scott said, looking up at the apartment buildings.

  “A couple blocks,” D said. “It’s such a nice night, let’s get some air.”

  Scott was amendable to a short stroll and the two of them headed up Third Avenue. Five minutes later they turned onto 82nd Street and D led them to his townhouse.

  “Upstairs or downstairs?” Scott asked, looking at the four story building in front of them.

  “Oh, all of it,” D replied, smiling. He could tell by the impressed expression on Scott’s face that the seduction had begun. How easily people let down their guard in the presence of wealth, he thought, walking up the four front steps and letting them into his home.

  Once they entered they stood in the front entryway, a long hall with dark wood floor planks as old as the house itself. D tossed his keys on an antique crescent table, above which hung a portrait of an elegant woman in a blue gown and raven hair sitting in a red high-backed chair. D had no idea who she was. “My grandmother,” he said, nodding at the picture.

  Judging by the wealth displayed in the painting, Scott decided money ran in the family and that he’d done quite well on this date. Very different from the last few he’d had. The men he met online were either older and still using profile photos from ten years ago, or younger and disappointed in him for a variety of reasons. He had all but given up dating, and was now glad he’d given it one more chance.

  D led them into the living room, which might properly be called a sitting room. There was a television tastefully concealed in an oak cabinet. Along one wall was a fireplace with another portrait above it, this one of a gentleman from the late 1900s and a large dog at his feet. Another stranger D had been looking at for a decade and telling people he was related to.

  “This is an amazing house,” Scott said. He was afraid to sit on the couch, which looked well-kept but old and expensive.

  D saw his hesitation. “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s made for sitting.”

  Scott eased down onto the couch, marveling at its softness. Was it velvet? He wasn’t sure, and he ran his hand across the fabric. So soft.

  D walked over and stood in front of Scott. He cocked his head slightly, curious at this specimen. Scott reached out and placed his hand on D’s thigh. A handsome man indeed, thought D. Such a shame. Or such a prize.

  D leaned down and kissed Scott. Not passionately, but enticingly. Just a taste.

  “What can I get you to drink?” D said. Then, “Oh, wait, Scotch! Scotch for Scott!”

  Scott laughed. He was feeling luckier by the minute.

  “I happen to have that very old, unopened bottle. No ice, of course. One does not dilute seventy-five-year-old Scotch. I’ll be right back.”

  Scott leaned back against the couch cushion. He watched D turn a corner into a dining room. He began to hum a song to himself, one among his few favorite love songs.

  D stopped smiling the moment he turned into the dining room and was out of Scott’s line of vision. He walked to his liquor cabinet, another antique he had no use for except as a prop. He leaned down and opened the door, looking into the bottles of rum, Brandy, Bombay Gin and Dewar’s. It was not seventy-five years old, but he seriously doubted Scott would know. If he could tell the difference, he wouldn’t have long to comment on it. D reached behind the bottles, into the back of the cabinet, and wrapped his hand around the bottle of Rohypnol. One of those and Scott would soon think any Scotch was the best in the world.

  Rohypnol acts very quickly. Once Scott began to enjoy his Scotch, commenting on its remarkable flavor, which made D smile, there wasn’t much time to get him downstairs.

  “I have a wine cellar second to none,” D said, watching Scott for any signs of fatigue. It would be coming soon. “At least not second to any I’ve seen.”

  “Very nice,” Scott replied.

  And? D thought. He wasn’t expecting a dismissive “very nice.”

  “I’m not a wine drinker, definitely not a connoisseur.”

  “I’d still like to show you. It’s not something you’ll find in most homes, a world-class wine cellar. Come, we’ll only be a minute. I imagine you’re getting hungry and we should head out.”

  “I thought you had some work to do.”

  “I’ve decided it can wait. Dinner with such a nice gentleman has pushed any thoughts of work right out of my head.”

  “Well, I was hungry,” Scott said. “Now I’m a little woozy.”

  “Seventy-five year old Scotch will do that to you. Now please, indulge me. I don’t often have the pleasure of showing off my wines! You can bring your drink. Better yet, finish it and we’ll take a quick trip downstairs.”

  Scott nodded, then tipped his glass back and drained the rest of the Scotch. He set his glass down on the coffee table, stood unsteadily and followed D toward a door just off the kitchen.

  D opened the door. A waft of cool air rushed up at them. It was a welcome sensation for Scott. He was beginning to feel warm, helped by the June weather. Soon it would be hot in New York City, hot and sticky.

  “After you,” D said, standing aside and motioning down the stairs.

  “I don’t feel well,” Scott said. “I normally hold my liquor quite well. Very strange. You’d think there was something in it …”

  A look of dawning realization came over Scott’s face. He was on the third step down when he turned back and stared at D, who was no longer smiling.

  “What brand of Scotch did you say that was?”

  “My own,” D said. He stepped forward and with both hands shoved Scott down the stairs. He would not normally do this, but he knew Scott was growing suspicious and he had to act quickly. He did not want to break Scott’s neck in a fall—that would ruin the fun—but neither could he risk a struggle.

  “Hey!” Scott shouted just as he tumbled backward, down two steps, three, six, finally landing at the bottom of the stairs. His legs felt like rubber and when he flung his hands out grasping for the hand railing, the steps, anything to give him balance and stop his head from swimming, they simply flailed.

  “What are you doing?” he managed, looking back up the stairs at D and trying to focus his vision.

  D said nothing. The time for explanations had passed—and he never explained himself anyway. He bounded down the steps, leaping the last two over Scott and landing on the basement floor in front of him.

  “Help!” Scott cried.

  “No one can hear you,” D said. “Not your calls for help. Not your screams when they come.”

  D grabbed Scott’s collar and began to drag the now-helpless man across the cellar floor, into his special room. There was an examination table waiting, handcuffs, a state of the art Nikon on a tripod, and the special belt he used to strangle his victims when he was finally done with them. Sometimes it was twenty minutes, sometimes an hour. It all depended how exciting it was and how unwilling they were to have their deaths prolonged. The less they fought, the less he was interested. It was a paradox of the trade: a serial killer who only enjoys the ones who make it hardest to be killed! The easily defeated ones, the ones who went limp or imagined they would please him with passivity, were quickly disposed of. He liked them trying to shout, to call out hopelessly and strain against the bindings. He especially liked the ones who threatened him and told him what they would do to him once they were free. Freedom never came, only a last breath, an exhale of complete surrender. No one would hear that, either. No one except D himself, when he leaned down close, closer, listening to them as they gasped their final breaths.

  “I can’t hear you,” D would say, turning his ear to their mouths. “You’ll have to speak up.”

  He felt the old passion return as he man
aged to get Scott on the table and begin his inspection. Very nice specimen. He liked them in shape. Age was not a determining factor, and Scott had taken good care of himself.

  D began to take his own clothes off. There was seldom much blood; he simply liked to look at himself as he went about his favorite pastime.

  He bound Scott to the table, sorry the man was now unconscious. He would have to wake him up when the time came. He didn’t go through all this to miss the best part.

  The body slipped easily into the East River. They always did, giving out just a splash as they broke the water’s surface. D got them there in his car. It’s the only reason he kept one in the City. No one really needs a car in Manhattan, unless it’s for leaving. D chuckled as he headed back to his Lincoln. He supposed the car was for leaving, but he was not the one heading off. It was men like Scott, and Victor Someone, and Kerry and Rafael. He didn’t remember all their names. He didn’t need to. The souvenirs brought their names back to him. He always kept something, and when he took them out of his bedroom safe he suddenly remembered each and every one in detail.

  He reached into his pocket, whistling lightly as he walked. There, next to his own keys, was the set he took from Scott. Just a half dozen keys, to a half dozen locks Scott would never open again. One of them, D knew, was to the man’s apartment. It was silent now, as silent as the night. It was a silence that would never be broken again by the sound of the apartment owner walking through the door.

  Scott had proven especially defiant. It was a nice surprise; D had expected him to be one of his more pliable victims. He couldn’t say why; perhaps he’d let old stereotypes color his perception. But he had been wrong—delightfully wrong—as he’d discovered once Scott regained consciousness. It had tuned into a shouting match with only one of them shouting! No pleading, that was good, he didn’t like the simpering ones. Plenty of struggle, with Scott thrashing this way and that, calling for help, his face so red D had feared a stroke might steal the moment from him. But fortune had been on his side once again and Scott had reminded him in every sensual, psychological, physical and emotional way, why he loved what he did so much. It had been both sublime and ecstatic. The only disappointment for the nearly ninety minutes he enjoyed with Scott was that it ended.

  He felt fine as he walked to his car. Great, really. He was back in fit form. It had all gone fantastically. He would have to rethink this whole retirement business. Who retires anymore?

  CHAPTER Twenty-One

  Kyle had slept fitfully. The dinner had been lovely, followed by a walk around Gramercy Park and down to Union Square. He and Danny wanted to make sure Detective Linda saw plenty of sights on this trip. She hadn’t come with a list of things to see and Kyle had not suggested one. He thought the best way to experience New York City was to just show up and go where your interests took you. Their visit to the Met had been ridiculously brief and Kyle meant to ask Linda if she’d like to go back and spend an afternoon there. They only had a few more days—her flight to Phoenix was scheduled for Monday morning. And before that there was the parade Sunday. So little time.

  He’d tossed and turned most of the night, disturbed by dreams. In one he was jogging along the East River under a full moon. Jogging was something Kyle would only do in a dream. As he ran along he came upon a small child, a little girl in a frilly yellow church dress, pointing at the water’s edge. She said nothing to him, he said nothing to her. Instead he stopped jogging and walked over to the riverbank. There, floating face up, was Danny. Wearing the same clothes he’d had on last night for their walk. Kyle stood staring down into the water, unable to scream, unable to speak. And then, floating into view, coming to rest next to his husband and best friend of nearly eight years, was Detective Linda. Face up, eyes dead, bloated.

  Kyle had bolted up from the dream, sucking in his breath. He’d reached down to feel for Smelly, who always slept between them. She was there. Danny was there. They were in bed. The clock read 3:00 a.m. It was only a dream. He’d managed to fall back asleep after telling Danny, who’d woken from the sudden movement, that everything was fine. It took an hour, but the last time Kyle glanced at the clock it was just turning 4:00 a.m.. A moment later he was back asleep, this time dreaming about cats, hundreds of cats in a house of rooms.

  He finally got up as the sun began to blanket the sky with early morning light. He quietly went to the kitchen and made coffee for himself. Cup in hand, he padded quietly back to bed in his slippers, tossed them off and slid back onto the mattress. He turned the morning news on low. He knew Danny was awake, but it was one of their differences: Kyle could not stay on his back, staring at the ceiling, or on his side looking out into the dark room. Once his mind clicked on he had to move, even if he just got up for coffee and came back to bed. Danny, on the other hand, had no trouble staying put for another half hour or more.

  The familiar faces of Channel 2 filled the TV screen. Kyle had imagined for years that the TV news people were his extended family. He’d had a crush on several of them—the weatherman from Channel 4, and an anchor named George from Channel 7 who had mysteriously vanished three years ago, surfacing in a much smaller market (Kyle kept tabs on them now that the internet made anonymity nearly impossible). He was watching, sipping his coffee, when a “BREAKING” segment came on. A young Asian woman, new to the channel, was reporting live from the East River.

  Kyle immediately felt sick. He kept watching.

  The name “Melissa Pang” appeared in the left corner, identifying the reporter.

  “… the dead man has been identified as Scott Devlin. The information we have so far is that an early morning jogger noticed the body floating near the riverbank around 4:00 a.m. this morning. The jogger, whose name has not been released, immediately called police.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “What?” said Danny, sitting up to watch the news report.

  “We made a mistake. A terrible mistake.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Shhh!”

  Kyle leaned in, focusing his attention on the reporter’s words.

  “Authorities refuse to say if this is the work of the Pride Killer until further determinations can be made,” Melissa said.

  “Of course it is!” Kyle shouted at the TV.

  “That man was never caught and was believed to have died or left the area, but fear is beginning to spread in New York’s gay community. As of this morning, the hashtag #PrideKiller has been trending on Twitter. Can social media solve what the NYPD has failed to for seven years?”

  “Great,” Danny grumbled. “Everything’s a hashtag now.”

  “I wonder what he kept,” Kyle wondered aloud.

  “What?”

  “A souvenir. The Pride Killer always keeps one.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “They did a profile on him the last time, it was on NYNow. They were getting desperate, hoping to jog someone’s memory in the public—and then he stopped. Or went away, or got bored, who knows. But he kept something from all his victims.”

  “Well, they’re not going to tell you what he kept, if they even know,” Danny said. “They hold that information back, in case they have a suspect.”

  “I have to tell Linda.”

  “Let her sleep, you can’t do anything about it at this hour.”

  “No, she’ll want to know.”

  “I’m already up,” Linda said. She was standing in the open doorway, her brown bathrobe held closed with its belt. “I saw it, too.”

  There was a television in the spare room. Kyle watched sometimes when he was at his desk, and it provided company with something to watch if they wanted to be alone.

  “We should have gone.”

  “Where, Kyle?” Linda said. “Where should we have gone? What should we have done? This isn’t your fault. You had no way of knowing.”

  “But I did. I knew he kills in threes. I knew the second was coming, but not so soon.”

  Kyle hopped out of
bed, sliding his feet back into his slippers.

  “Where are you going?” Danny asked. He was up now, too. Luxuriating in bed was not to be his this morning.

  “More coffee, and a plan of some kind. We have to move quickly.”

  Kyle walked past Linda and headed to the kitchen. She turned and followed him, with Smelly and Leonard bounding off the bed and giving chase.

  Kyle popped another single serving cup into the machine. “What kind do you want? We have a selection.”

  Linda stepped past him and looked at the coffee carousel on the counter, deciding between dark Columbian roast and vanilla hazelnut.

  “We need to go to that store,” Kyle said.

  “Keller and Whitman?”

  “Yes. Vic Campagna either never made it there, or he left and met his killer shortly after. Maybe he said something to the staff, gave some indication where he was going.”

  “It’s quarter after six in the morning,” Linda said. She handed him the vanilla hazelnut pod.

  “Yes, I know what time it is, and I want to be there the minute they open. In the meantime I want to watch the news, see if they come out with anything more. And I want to go online. Whoever this Scott Devlin is, he may have a website, or a profile. The more we know before we leave here, the sooner we might have some idea where to look next.”

  Linda stood quietly, letting Smelly circle her feet. She thought of the gun she’d brought with her, tucked in her suitcase. It had been her father’s gun, the one he’d left at home when he went to the store all those years ago and was gunned down outside a corner market in a botched robbery. It was his service pistol from his time as Military Police in Vietnam, a Colt .45 Series 70 government model he’d used as a Cincinnati cop. Her mother gave it to her when she joined the New Hope Police Force but she had never carried it on duty. It was too special for that. She had had kept it, cleaned it, and fired it hundreds of times at a local range, and now that she was retired it was her protection. She did not travel without it—or her permit to carry it as a retired police officer—unless she was flying. At some point soon she would need to let Kyle know she had it, especially now that she intended to bring it with her. She had not believed in putting her safety in anyone’s hands but her own since she was eight years old and learned it could be fatal.