by R. G. Belsky
“That’s very noble. But you did get a front-page story out of it. That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” I said, “you can break a big story and do the right thing too.”
“But not always.”
“No,” I said, “not always.”
Bonnie shook her head.
“Let me tell you something, Joe, I’m a pretty perceptive person. I have to be, I’m a reporter. I get paid to figure out what people are all about. Now you—I read you right now as a guy with serious confusion. I know about your family, how they turned up on Galvin’s list. And I’m sorry about that wound opening up again. But I don’t think that’s the only reason you’re on this story. I figure you’ve got something else to prove. To the Banner. To the world. To yourself. Am I right or am I right?”
I smiled. “Like you said, Bonnie, you’re a very perceptive person.”
Chapter 16
Carolyn woke me up with a phone call the next morning.
“You haven’t called,” she said.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy.”
I pulled myself out of bed, still holding the phone to my ear, and looked at the clock. Eight-fifteen. I needed to get going. There were computer printouts from NYU scattered over the bed. I’d fallen asleep reading more of them the night before. Outside, the sky was a bright blue and the sun was shining in through the open window. It was going to be a beautiful spring day. I needed to get out there and enjoy it.
“How about I drive down to Princeton later?” I said to Carolyn.
“Do you think you can get away?”
“Sure. I’m supposed to have a meeting with Andy this morning to go over some stuff on the story. As soon as that’s over, I’ll hit the turnpike. If there’s no traffic, I can be walking in the front door an hour later. Maybe an hour and a half tops.”
“Are you sure you remember the way, Joe?” she asked. “It’s been a long time.”
“I’ll buy a map.”
“How about finding your way around the bedroom?” Carolyn asked teasingly. “It’s been a while since you’ve been there too.”
“I’ll buy a map for that too.”
“There are no maps in the bedroom, big guy. You’re on your own in that department.” She giggled. “I guess you’ll just have to feel your way until you get where you’re going.”
“Maybe I’ll ask a friendly face for directions,” I said.
Carolyn laughed. A terrific laugh. She was a terrific person. I sure was a lucky guy to have a woman like her walk into my life. The first good thing to happen to me in a long, long time. Now all I had to do is to make sure I didn’t do anything to screw it up.
There was only one thing wrong with Carolyn.
I knew what it was, but I couldn’t do anything about it.
She wasn’t Susan.
After all this time, I still missed Susan. I’d never really stopped thinking about her. But now—ever since I’d found her and Joey’s name on Felix the Cat’s list of victims—I just couldn’t get her out of my mind.
The thing I remember most about Susan was that she was always exciting.
She got excited about everything in life—even the smallest things—and it made life exciting for the people around her too.
Like me.
I remember the first time we flew anywhere together. She was like a kid with a new toy. Everything on the plane made her happy—the takeoff, the landing, the in-flight movie, the airline food, watching the other passengers and making up stories about where they were going. She kept clapping her hands and laughing and just having a great time. It was infectious. I’ve been on more planes than I care to remember, but I was having as much fun as she was.
It was the same way at the movies. She cheered when the lights in the theater went down, she cheered for the upcoming previews, she cheered when the main feature came on. Like we were at a baseball game or something. Everything she did was an adventure.
Susan’s favorite time of the year was Christmas. Nobody did Christmas like she did. There was always a big tree, decorations everywhere, Christmas cards to everyone she ever met, all sorts of holiday food, Christmas caroling—the whole works. After Joey was born, she got even more caught up in the holiday spirit. She wanted to make Christmas special for him, even if he was too young to really appreciate it yet. I just didn’t know it would be the only Christmas the three of us would ever have together.
God. She had such a passion for living.
I guess that’s what I really miss about her the most.
“Joe, are you okay?” Carolyn asked over the phone.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about some stuff I have to do before I leave to drive down there.”
“But you definitely are coming?”
“Absolutely.”
“I love you, Joe,” Carolyn said.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I told her, “I love you too.”
But I never did see Carolyn that day.
Too many things were happening.
That morning, after I hung up with her, I spent some more time going through the NYU computer printouts. It was an impossible job. There were thousands of names. Even if I found a name that meant something to me—and there was no reason I should—I might very easily miss it because of the sheer volume of the material I was dealing with.
I got lucky though.
I did find two more names that I recognized.
Not that it proved anything, of course. Like I kept telling myself, a lot of students went to NYU and the odds were pretty good that people I knew—or who would go on to bigger things—would turn up on the lists.
The two names I found though were very intriguing, to say the least.
Just like Lisa Montero’s had been.
One of them was my old friend Andy Kramer. That really surprised me. I remembered now though that when he first came to the Banner as a copyboy, he was still taking classes at some college. I just never realized it was NYU. And he once told me his family had a lot of money—and was disappointed that he hadn’t gone into a higher-paying profession than newspapers.
The second name was even more interesting.
Once again, the entire pattern was there. The one Galvin had told me about. He said the Great Pretenders all came from affluent, upwardly mobile families, just like he did. And, he said, while he languished in jail, the other three had gone on to become big successes and prominent names.
Well, this third name certainly held a very high-profile, prominent public post.
And, according to the computer records, he’d been at NYU during all of the years Galvin was there.
What was it Galvin had said about the Great Pretenders?
“They all became respectable, successful members of society—nobody ever knew about the deadly secrets in their past. Ironic, huh? The Great Pretenders disappeared just like the people they once murdered. Poof—and they were gone.”
Except someone was still out there killing people.
I looked at the names on the piece of paper in front of me.
Especially the third name.
It was Greg Ackerman.
The assistant district attorney in charge of the William Franze investigation.
I was getting ready to leave for the office with this new information when Captain Righetti, my old friend at police headquarters, called and changed everything.
A big story was breaking.
The Great Pretenders had just struck again.
Chapter 17
It was President John F. Kennedy who said that anyone can murder another person if they really want to.
There is no amount of protection, no precaution, no safeguard that will ever be enough to stop a truly determined adversary from killing his intended target, JFK said.
Sooner or later, the odds are always against the victim.
That person will die.
President Kennedy made these comments in Houston on the night before his ow
n assassination—which I guess gives them a particular ring of authenticity.
Anyway, it’s a good theory. A theory that most law enforcement experts agree with, even if they never admit it publicly. But it didn’t have much to do with the death of Linda Hiller. Because the killer didn’t have to get through any elaborate net of protection to get to her. The cops and the DA’s office screwed this one up.
This is how it happened.
After I got David Galvin’s list—with Linda Hiller’s name on it—the police put her under special guard. She was moved out of her house to a safe place—she was under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. She didn’t go to work, she didn’t go out, she didn’t even tell her close friends and relatives where she was. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was about as good as a security plan can be.
Except it got boring.
After a few days of this, everyone got tired of it. The cops and the DA’s office didn’t really believe Linda Hiller was on some serial killer’s list anyway—it had to be a mistake. Who would want to kill her?
They never bought David Galvin’s story either. A band of Felix the Cat accomplices still running loose out there? Captain Righetti had told me that first day in his office he didn’t think it was for real. A lot of people agreed with him. They figured Galvin had just left the list for me as some sort of sick joke—and that he’d made the whole thing up.
So the authorities decided to switch to a lower level of security. Linda Hiller could go back to work. Cops would escort her to and from her job, and keep a squad car outside her house at night. Everyone agreed this was a good compromise solution.
The last time anyone saw her alive was when she left the office of her theatrical agency at 2:15 in the afternoon. The office was on the tenth floor of a midtown high rise. She told her secretary she’d only be away for a few minutes—she was just going to talk to somebody in another office on the first floor about a client she wanted to audition for a Broadway show.
When she didn’t return by five, the secretary went looking for her. She discovered that Linda Hiller had never showed up in the first-floor office. The police were called. They searched the building first, then the neighborhood—and finally went back to her house in the hope that she’d just gone home for some reason in the middle of the afternoon. But there was no sign of her anywhere.
Then, the next day, the owner of a shop that sold wedding dresses in a nearby building called the police in a panic. He told them that when he came to work that morning, one of his mannequins was missing. In its place was the body of a dead woman—dressed from head to toe in one of his wedding gowns.
It was Linda Hiller.
I stood outside the wedding gown shop now with Captain Righetti and watched the medical examiner’s people get ready to carry her body out to a waiting morgue truck.
“Well, this proves it, doesn’t it?”
“Proves what?”
“That Galvin was telling me the truth. His friends are still out there playing this sick game. At least one of them is anyway. That’s who did this.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean maybe?”
“The big boys downtown don’t necessarily see it that way.”
“They’re the ones who screwed this whole thing up in the first place by letting her out of their sight without any protection.”
“Joe, in all the time you’ve been a reporter, have you ever heard of public officials taking responsibility when they made a mistake?”
“No.”
“Well, then you’re not going to be surprised by what I have to tell you. The commissioner and the DA say anyone could have done this. That you guys at the Banner printed all the names on the list in your paper. They figure it would have been easy for some copycat nut to knock off Linda Hiller—and then make it look like one of Galvin’s weird fantasies.”
“Do you buy that?”
Righetti shrugged. He was too smart to answer.
“By the way, everyone blames you for the Hiller woman’s death,” he told me. “I thought you might want to know. They say that printing her name in the paper was irresponsible journalism.”
“Kill the messenger, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Oh, that’s beautiful.”
I tried to sound indignant, but the truth is he had a point. I’d said the same thing to Andy Kramer when I filed the story. I suggested we leave out the names of the potential victims. Say we were withholding them at the request of the authorities. But Andy said no—he wanted to use them. He gave me a big speech about the public’s right to know, but we both knew the real reason he was doing it. There’s always a fine line you walk at a newspaper between telling people the whole story and stooping to sensationalism. Most of the time you wind up on the sensationalism side.
“What about the other name on the list?” I asked. “Arthur Dodson?”
“That’s a really weird one. Nobody knows where Dodson is. He disappeared right after you published the stuff about the list. We haven’t been able to locate him.”
“You think he’s dead too?”
Righetti shook his head. “He left some sort of tearful message for his wife and kids on his answering machine the other day,” he said. “Told them how much he missed them, but he had to go away for a while. He said he’d talk to them soon. That’s the only thing we’ve heard from him.”
“It sounds like he’s scared and on the run.”
“We’ll find him. It’s just a matter of time.”
“I think Galvin’s list is for real,” I said as I watched them put Linda Hiller’s body into the morgue wagon. “I think whoever did this is the same person that killed William Franze and the call girl. The same person who’s responsible for all the other unsolved killings Galvin talked about too. And I’m going to prove it.”
“Well, if what you say is true, then Lisa Montero would have to be the leading suspect.”
“Everyone figures she’s the one that killed Franze and the girl, huh?”
Righetti nodded. “From what I hear, the DA’s office is really close to bringing in a double-murder indictment against her. This guy Ackerman over there has turned this into a personal vendetta. He says he’s going nail her. I think Ackerman’s got some real hard-on about her father, John Montero. Not that a lot of people in this town don’t. Except John Montero has always been pretty invulnerable. But his daughter—well, maybe she’s an easier target. And all the evidence seems to point toward her. Ackerman’s had her in his sights for the Franze killings ever since they first happened.”
Greg Ackerman.
Lisa Montero.
David Galvin.
All of them had gone to NYU at the same time.
There had to be some sort of connection.
I followed the same routine as I did before. I wrote up the story, turned it in to the city desk, and then went next door to Lanigan’s to have a few beers with some of the other reporters while I waited for the early editions of the Banner to come off the presses. They put it on Page One, of course. The headline said,
NEW FELIX THE CAT KILLING
WOMAN’S BIZARRE MURDER LINKED TO INFAMOUS SERIAL KILLER’S PALS
By Joe Dougherty
I read the story one more time, then walked back to Lanigan’s for a nightcap. Andy Kramer was there, and he gave me a big greeting. He bought me a drink too. Andy was my friend again. Funny how much difference a big story can make in your life.
“This stuff is dynamite,” he said, pointing to my story on the front page. “It really does look like those nuts that Felix the Cat went to school with are still out there doing their thing. You’re really kicking ass on this story, Joe.”
“I just report the facts, Andy.”
“Well, you couldn’t have done better with this one if you’d made them up.”
He suddenly realized what he’d just said.
“Jeez, I’m sorry, Joe—I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”
“No probl
em.”
“What happened happened. It was a long time ago. That’s all water under the bridge now.”
“I’ve learned to live with it.”
Andy nodded. “What else have you got?”
I told him everything I’d done. My trip to NYU. The visit to David Galvin’s parents. Finding out about the NYU connection to Lisa Montero. The NYU link to Greg Ackerman. All the other leads I was following. He seemed pleased. Everything I did sounded great to Andy these days. I was aces in his book.
“By the way,” I said, when I was finished—trying to make it sound as casual as possible, “you went to NYU, didn’t you?”
“Sure did.”
“About the same time as David Galvin?”
“Yeah, I think I was there during one of those years.”
“But you never knew him?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“How about Lisa Montero or Greg Ackerman?”
I guess he suddenly realized where this was headed.
“You’re not asking me if I was one of the Great Pretenders, are you, Joe?” he said. “If I hung out with Galvin and his nutty friends? If I killed a bunch of people just for kicks at my old alma mater before I graduated with honors in journalism and came to the Banner?”
Well, Andy Kramer did fit the pattern.
“Of course not,” I laughed. “I was just hoping you might have remembered something about him.”
Andy took a swig of his beer.
“It sounds like Lisa Montero is your best bet as a suspect,” he said.
“That’s what the cops and the DA think.”
“I wonder what her story is.”
“She’s not talking.”
“You’ve tried?”
“Everybody has.”
“She’d make a helluva interview.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So?”
“I’m working on it,” I said.
Chapter 18
I found Lisa Montero at Elaine’s two days later.
It was a little after eleven at night when she walked in. I was at the bar nursing a beer in what they call the tourist section. There’s a real class distinction at Elaine’s, which became famous over the years as the “in” hangout for everyone from Woody Allen to Norman Mailer to Liza Minnelli. Anybody—even the tourists from Ohio or Nebraska—can get a seat at the bar. But if you want a table, you wind up back next to the kitchen—so far from the action and celebrities you might as well have stayed home. It’s better in the middle of the room. And the front tables are kept for the important people. Lisa Montero got one of the front tables.