“And Dad will be speaking to the General Assembly on childhood poverty—of course. How cool is that?”
“Very cool.”
Michael pressed his lips together and nodded, and Trisha could see that he was brimming with emotion. He’d come such a long way from wild-man rock god to world-class philanthropist, and she knew that fame wasn’t an ego trip for him anymore. It was a means to help kids, and that was all he cared about. She was proud of him and all he’d done with his money. She’d often thought that maybe if she were an impoverished kid in Congo or Myanmar or Honduras or wherever, they might have a better relationship.
“UNICEF will also be honoring Dad at a black-tie dinner,” Cindy said. She patted his knee. “And you deserve it.”
“Absolutely,” Trisha added.
“Well, you know where you can stick the honors,” he said with a mischievous bad-boy grin. “The important thing is that the McCleery Foundation for Children is officially being recognized by UNICEF, which will help with fund-raising. Hopefully this will elevate us from a rich rockstar’s pet cause to an internationally respected charitable organization.”
Trisha reached for an almond biscotti. “I think you get a lot of respect right now, Dad.”
“I do. But there are a lot of countries that won’t accept our help. Bone-headed dictators who don’t want assistance from any American no matter how hard up they are, and corrupt bureaucrats who want bribe after bribe and there’s never any guarantee the resources will actually get to the kids. UNICEF won’t solve all those problems, but it will open some doors for us. And the way Gene’s investments have been going, I have a lot to give.”
He winked, but Trisha had a feeling it was for Cindy, not her. Cindy, after all, was the President of the McCleery Foundation and in charge of its day-to-day operations. Trisha supported their work, but she felt left out whenever they talked about it. She had only a general idea of how they distributed the money. During the last week of every year, she gave what she could to several charities, including her father’s, but on her salary she could afford only a few hundred dollars each, and mailing that check to the McCleery Foundation always made her feel inadequate. In some ways it was worse than giving nothing at all.
Her father leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked right at her. “Trisha, can I ask you for a favor?”
“Ah… sure. Anything.” She was instantly wary and hated herself for feeling that way.
He reached across the sofa, grabbed the guitar by the neck, and set it in his lap. “Sing with me. We haven’t done that in so long.” A trace of sadness coated his words.
Trisha’s stomach bottomed out. When she was a teenager, they used to sing together all the time. You couldn’t stop them from singing. Each of them had a gift for harmonizing and they did it beautifully—her soprano twining around his baritone like a flowering vine on an oak tree. But after her mom died, it got harder and harder for Trisha to bring herself to do it. They had been singing when her mother was murdered, and she still felt that maybe if they hadn’t been on stage, one of them might have seen the killer and somehow stopped him. That’s why singing with her father just didn’t seem right any more.
“What do you think?” he said as he plucked strings with his thumb and adjusted the tuning.
A feeling of dread dropped over Trisha like a heavy black curtain. He was going to want to sing “I Need You,” and in her mind that was the song they had been singing when the killer took her mother. The cheers and applause must have masked her screams for help. At least that’s how Trisha dreamt it in her nightmares.
She was about to say no and make up an excuse when he started strumming chords. “How about ‘Across the Universe’? The Beatles song. We used to do that one, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” Cindy said. “Do that one.”
No doubt Cindy saw this as an opportunity for Trisha to get closer to their father, but she didn’t realize how difficult this was. He was already humming the melody as he played. Trisha had always sung harmony on the chorus; he sang the verse by himself. It wasn’t much singing for her so maybe she could do it. Maybe she should try.
Michael started singing. He had a wonderfully expressive voice and a unique ability to maintain the melody while making the lyrics sound like a private conversation with the listener. Trisha cleared her throat, waiting nervously for her part. She could feel sweat forming in her armpits. The first words of the chorus were in Urdu, but the song had been a family favorite and she still remembered the lyrics.
He held her eyes with his and nodded, signaling that the chorus was coming. She nodded back and for the first time in a long time, she felt connected to him, connected the way they used to be. She started to sing, tentative at first, like a person taking her first steps after recovering from a severe injury. Her father smiled as he sang. She took a breath, still feeling shaky but thrilled by his joyous expression. She started the second line.
“‘Nothing’s—’“
Suddenly she felt the buzz of her Blackberry in her pocket, and her heart started to pound. She stopped singing and instinctively pulled it out, looking at the face. Barry Krieger, her supervisor. She assumed he was calling about the case and answered it.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“He struck again.” Barry sounded grim.
“Drac?”
“Yeah, looks like his work.”
“Where?”
He gave her the address, 25 Columbus Circle in Manhattan. She pulled out a pen and jotted it down on a paper napkin.
“You’d better get over there before the locals mess up the crime scene.”
“I’m about an hour and a half away,” she said. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Call me when you get there. I’ll meet you.”
Oh, please don’t, she thought.
“I’ll talk to you later,” she said and hung up.
Her father stood up in a huff and dropped the guitar in his wake. It hit the sofa arm with a thud, the strings ringing out. He strode through the room and out the front door to the porch. Through one of the windows, she could see him with his back to her, hands in his hips as he stared out at the pond. The lonely sound of a croaking bullfrog reverberated across the water.
Trisha felt awful. She’d blown it.
Cindy sighed. “And it was going so well.”
“I know.”
Cindy reached for the carafe. “More coffee?”
“No, I gotta get going.”
Cindy nodded that she understood, but Trisha got the feeling she didn’t approve. She always protected their father.
Trisha took one last sip, then stood up to go. Dad was Cindy’s project. Mom was hers. It was time to go catch a serial killer. For Mom.
She thought about going out and apologizing to her father, but she was afraid it would just make things worse.
“See you soon,” she said to her sister and headed for the back door. Her car was parked next to the stage.
Chapter 8
Trisha stood on the landing outside the master bedroom in the latest victim’s luxury triplex and looked down at the living room below where three plainclothes detectives talked softly. The hushed atmosphere was occasionally violated by the crackle of the police radio clipped to the shoulder of a female uniform guarding the door. The forensics technicians had done their work and were gone, and the detectives’ subdued behavior made it feel like a wake. Trisha would have preferred the hubbub of a fresh crime scene. She was still shaky from having been in her mother’s room earlier that day, and she was feeling guilty about the aborted song incident with her father. It wasn’t her fault that her boss had called at that moment, but her father had a way of always making her feel responsible for his disappointment.
Pete Warwick was with the group of detectives in the living room
. He caught her eye and sent her a hipster half-smile. He was wearing his usual black suit, white shirt, and skinny black tie, but today he had topped it off with a black straw porkpie hat. She was glad that he was here. She’d miss him when this was all over.
She steeled herself before walking into the bedroom where the techies had left their tripod lamps to illuminate the room. The light from the two matching night-table lamps with their dark, stained-glass shades was dim and inadequate. The body was on the bed on her back, head lolled to her left, arms splayed like a discarded marionette, one above her head, the other pointing at her feet. Pink ligature marks on her wrists and ankles showed that she’d been bound, but whatever ligatures the killer had used, they hadn’t broken the skin. Cloth, Trisha assumed. Or maybe some kind of soft cord. The woman was clothed, but her light blue pullover and white bra had been hiked up to her neck. Drac’s weapon of choice, a spinal needle, protruded from her lower chest under the breastbone, angled upward toward the heart. Trisha had consulted a surgeon when she first started working on the Drac investigation. This killer had figured out the best way to access the heart. At first she’d thought he might have some kind of medical training, then discovered that there were dozens of instructional videos online that would have given him this information.
But it was the blood that held Trisha in a trance. The skin on the woman’s chest and abdomen was clean, but the section of the bed where the tube ended between her knees was soaked. The maroon velvet spread hid the stains, but under the bright light of the tripod lamps, the fabric looked slick and wet. The familiar sickly sweet smell of corpse blood was giving way to the putrid odor of decomposition.
Trisha couldn’t stop staring. She started making connections, and out of the blue a theory began to gel, almost mystically, the same way she had come up with crucial insights in her most celebrated cases—the Facebook Slayer in Nashville, the Big Foot Killer in New Hampshire, the Caveman in Santa Fe, Hairy Larry in Cleveland.
The Facebook Slayer’s victims were all plain-looking women. They reminded Trisha of nuns, and she intuited that this killer might be targeting women who resembled the nuns who had taught him in school. Old yearbook photos of teachers from St. Jude’s Elementary outside Nashville showed remarkable resemblances to some of the victims. Trisha believed that the killer had been a student there and had frequent run-ins with his teachers. The killer turned out to be a class clown who had been punished frequently for his transgressions.
In examining the crime scene photos of Big Foot’s victims, she had noticed that the five women he’d slaughtered like livestock and left in the woods all had stretch marks on their skin. Further investigation revealed that these woman had all been fat at one time and lost a great deal of weight. Big Foot was arrested sitting in his car outside a Curves gym in Nashua, masturbating.
The Caveman had been active for years, but his pattern was sporadic, the killings years apart. Nine bodies had been found in remote caves in northern New Mexico over an eleven-year period, but the killer had apparently been inactive for four consecutive years during that time. The police believed that he had been serving time on an unrelated conviction, but Trisha theorized that this killer had to develop a relationship with his victims before he killed them. She uncovered a transgendered manicurist who never worked in any one salon for more than a year. His victims had all been regular clients. A debilitating bout of rheumatoid arthritis accounted for his four-year layoff.
Hairy Larry was obsessed with long-haired women, cutting it off after death and in one case shearing it off with an electric razor. Police in Cleveland looked for suspects who had hair connections—barbers, hairdressers, people who sheared sheep, bald men, men with medical conditions that prevented them from growing hair—but it was Trisha who discovered a correlation between the killings and the publication of comic books that featured female superheroes with long lush hair, like Wonder Woman. Hairy Larry’s online comic book orders led police to his doorstep.
Trisha stared down at the body on the bed and let her thoughts wander, wondering if Drac could be the person who had killed her mother? It seemed insanely far-fetched, the kind of thinking she was always being accused of, but it was possible. This killer’s method could have evolved from jabbing at veins to piercing hearts. But could he have remained active for over twenty years? He could have spent some of that time in prison or somewhere else, overseas maybe. She froze where she stood, unable to move, petrified by the thought that it really could be him.
She told herself to stop being ridiculous and start thinking rationally. Eliminate the long shots. But she knew from experience that rational thinking was useless when trying to figure out a serial killer. There was nothing rational about a monster like this. The only reasoning that mattered was the twisted logic that existed in his own head. To the outside world a serial killer’s actions are random and seemingly senseless, but profilers knew better. Still she didn’t dare put her suspicions into words. The cops would think she was crazy, and her superiors would yank her off the case in a minute. For the time being she’d have to keep this to herself.
“Hey.” A soft voice came up behind her.
Pete held out a jar of Vicks VapoRub. Cops often smeared some on their upper lips to mask the smell of death.
She waved it away. “I’m good.”
He pointed at the body. “What do you think?”
“Don’t know yet. Who is she?”
“Mrs. Ginger Wexler.” He flipped through a small spiral notepad. “She was the widow of Robert Wexler who owned the Wexler Importing Company.”
“What do they import?”
“Liquor. Vodka, gin, scotch. Supposedly a pretty big company.”
“Everybody can use a drink sometimes,” she muttered.
“You look like you could use one now.”
She forced a smile. “I can wait.”
She stared at the colorful shade on one of the lamps and realized that each piece of glass was shaped like a piece of fruit—apples, pears, lemons, oranges, and cherries. “This is her place, I assume.”
“Yup. And she’s a member of the Orchid Club.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
Trisha studied Mrs. Wexler’s face. Her expression was a severe death grimace—mouth turned down, cheeks hollow, squinty eyes. Trisha didn’t recognize her from the meeting. Her light-brown shoulder-length hair seemed familiar, but a lot of the women at the club wore their hair this way. Trisha took note of the color. It was lighter than Drac’s other victims, which made Trisha wonder why he had selected her.
Pete snapped on a pair of latex gloves as he walked around to the other side of the bed. “Take a look at this. Something new.” He carefully turned Mrs. Wexler’s head, holding it by the chin and forehead, revealing her left profile.
Trisha’s stomach did a flip. Double stripes in dried blood across the woman’s cheek. Indian stripes. Same as the ones on Mom. Trisha’s chest tightened.
Heavy footsteps stomped over the cranberry-red carpeting. “Agent McCleery, where in the hell have you been?” Barry Krieger walked up to her, his brows crossed, jaw set. He wore a navy blue blazer over a dark green polo shirt, jeans, and boat shoes. “Did we disturb your Sunday, Agent McCleery?”
She knew right away from his sarcastic tone that he was performing for the crowd. The detectives who had been in the living room were outside the door, looking in. This routine was all for their benefit, Barry’s lame attempt to show them that he could kick butt and whip his troops into action.
She lowered her voice and looked him in the eye. “I was over seventy miles away in Sullivan County. I told you it would take me a while to get here. I left as soon as I got your call.”
He raised his voice so everyone could hear. “Yes, I’m sure Drac will slow down to fit your schedule. He’s escalating, Agent McCleery. He’s killing more often. Or haven’t you noticed?”
His remarks stung. Of course, she’d noticed. She knew Drac better than anyone. He was getting restless. He needed something he wasn’t getting with his kills. He wasn’t satisfied. But it wasn’t about the number of women he killed. Trisha felt that he had an unfulfilled compulsion to do something, prove something, or maybe finish something. She just had to figure out what. But why was he fixated on wealthy women from the Orchid Club? Was it their money? Had he killed her mother—if in fact he had killed her—because she was married to a wealthy rock star? If it was wealth that turned him on, the Orchid Club was the perfect fishing pond, but she had a feeling there was more to it than that. Could he possibly know that her sister is the daughter of one of his previous victims? Was Cindy part of the attraction? Please, God, no.
“Well, any thoughts?” Barry said. “Any new theories? Any new anything?”
She whispered in his face through gritted teeth. “Only that you’re a horse’s ass.”
“That’s insubordination, Agent McCleery.”
“So write me up.”
“Are you daring me?”
“It’s the truth, Barry. If you need to make yourself look big for the boys in blue, don’t do it at my expense. Get a publicist.”
She turned her back on him and walked to the victim’s dressing room, an alcove off the bedroom. As she passed Pete, she noticed he was biting a grin. “Nice going,” he said under his breath.
“Got an extra pair of gloves, detective?” she said.
“Sure.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair. “Here.”
She put them on as she stood in the middle of the dressing room and did a slow 360, getting a sense of the space. The room wasn’t big—about 8’ x 10’, she guessed—but it led to a walk-in closet that was at least as big with double rows of hanging clothes and an entire wall of shoe compartments. The bathroom was opposite the closet—lavender-colored fixtures and matching tile with eggplant-purple accents. She got a sense of Mrs. Wexler’s tastes—her furniture was contemporary but the colors had a Victorian feel. Four framed black-and-white photographs hung on one wall, each a street scene devoid of people. The streets were narrow; the buildings ponderous and partially hidden in shadow. An old European city, she guessed, though there was nothing in the photos to indicate which city. Trisha had a feeling that if Mrs. Wexler had been born in the 1980s, she would have been a Goth.
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