“Why is that?”
“I don’t know. It was just…a feeling. Maybe it was the baseball cap.”
“Anything else you noticed about him?”
“He had on a long coat. But the impression I have of him is from the back. He turned away after I looked over at him, and the coat sort of billowed out at the bottom, from the wind.”
I started drawing.
“Oh, God.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Do you think I actually saw the man who—”
I didn’t let her go there. “What else did you see?” I asked, and went back to the drawing.
She looked at my sketch. “Yes. That’s it, the general impression I got.”
“What about his face?”
She shook her head. “It’s a blank. He was across the street, and I didn’t really see it.”
“But you said he was white.”
“Yes. I’m pretty sure about that. Though…his face was in shadow.”
“Was he tall or short?”
“He might have been tall, it’s hard to say.”
“Was there anything you can compare him to, something in the street that might tell you more about him physically, why you thought he was tall?”
She closed her eyes again. “Well…he was leaning against a street lamp and his head was not that far from the plaque that tells you when you can and can’t park. That was it! Why he seemed tall.”
“That’s great.”
“If only—” She broke off and started crying.
I tried to console her, to get her back into the drawing, but her housekeeper came in and gave me a dirty look, and that was it.
12
I went back home, got a beer out of the fridge, opened my pad onto my work table, and looked at what I’d done. It wasn’t much yet. Nothing I could show Russo, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.
It got me thinking about my last girlfriend, the one who told me she didn’t know me any better after six months of dating than she did after our first, and said good-bye.
I looked around my spare apartment, at the furniture I’d inherited and never improved upon, the once white walls that had yellowed. I usually liked the fact that other than the superintendent I was the only resident in a building filled with small factories and offices, but right now it just felt lonely. Five years ago I’d taken over the lease from a painter with artist-in-residence status, which meant the city allowed you to live in a place other human beings thought uninhabitable.
Any minute I was going to start feeling sorry for myself, so I went back to the sketch I’d made of the man in the coat, and added a little more tone.
But the face was still blank, and nothing was coming to me.
I got another beer, set my iPod into its docking station, and listened to some music—Marianne Faithful, Lucinda Williams, and Tim Hardin, a singer I’d recently discovered who had OD’d in the seventies—real suicide material.
I looked back at my sketch, but another image snaked its way into my psyche.
I knew what it was—a variation on an image that had been in my mind for years.
I finished the beer, switched my iPod to an upbeat playlist of Reggaeton, Spanish rap over Jamaican dance hall with a little salsa thrown in, Daddy Yankee rapping “A ella le Gusta la Gasolina”—she loves gasoline—a double entendre if ever there was one, but the music didn’t work to distract me. My father was in my head, and I knew he was not going to quit anytime soon.
My father: who had been Superman, Batman, and every other Marvel and DC superhero to me. I thought about the good times—my father teaching me how to swing a bat and rhapsodizing about his hero, Roberto Clemente, the first Puerto Rican major league ballplayer; night games at Yankee Stadium and Shea, trips to the Planetarium. He’d initiated my love of music and he took me to a hundred movies, and when my tough-hombre dad cried during The Incredible Journey—a cornball movie about a lost dog and cat that I will never forget—I knew it was okay for me to cry too.
I pictured him when I was a little kid and he’d worn the uniform, standard blue, and then, when I was twelve, how he’d exchanged it for the narc’s costume of jeans and heavy bling.
Bits and pieces of those years started playing in my head: skipping school, taking the subway uptown to meet Julio in the middle of the day, smoking pot and snorting coke in alleyways and abandoned buildings, and there I was, back to the night my father found the drugs.
After he stormed out of the apartment I went to meet Julio, both of us edgy and eager to get stoned. El Barrio was stifling that night, everyone out on the streets, old men on milk crates playing dominoes; hydrants open, kids playing in the water; boom boxes blasting salsa music, men and women dancing. It was beautiful, the grit and garbage of the slum veiled by the darkness, moonlight painting the sweat on the dancers’ skin and the sprays of water silver.
Julio and I wandered the streets, sharing a few joints and a bottle of rum. We ended up in a movie theater and stared at the screen, but all I could see was my father’s face, and him yelling at me. Sometime around 3:00 A.M., I sobered up enough to realize I was going to have to face him. I begged Julio to come home with me as a buffer, but he wouldn’t do it.
That night was washing over me like a wave that knocks you down and drags you under. I drank another beer and turned the music way up, a raunchy number by some Puerto Rican duo, lots of drums and percussion. I managed to exchange the memory for the case, and worried I might not be up to it, that I hadn’t worked a homicide before.
Then I realized I had worked hundreds of homicides, just differently. I went to the closet and pushed stuff around till I found it, the Smith & Wesson NYPD-issued .38 Special heavy-barrel revolver. I hadn’t touched it since I left active police work, though I had kept up the permit. I got my hand around the stainless-steel grip. It felt good, but I remembered why I’d exchanged it for a pencil.
I went back to my work table and started a new drawing.
I had no idea why or where this was coming from, but stayed with it.
When I looked at it I shuddered. What the hell was this?
Maybe I was a little drunk.
But the drawing made me feel sober.
I thought about my father again, how he had always encouraged my art. He’d take my best drawings to the station and tape them inside his locker. He was proud of me, of my talent. The night he’d found my drugs, he had not only berated me but reminded me that I was special, that I’d been given a gift, and one day, he prayed, I would stop wasting my life and put it to use.
I wished he were here so I could tell him I had done what he asked. But sometimes you don’t get a second chance.
13
I was back at Midtown North with Terri Russo standing over me. I showed her the sketches.
She came in close and looked at the ones of the eye. “What the hell is this?”
“That’s what I asked myself. I don’t know. I might have been a little drunk.”
“Oh, great.”
“It was just a few beers. But I wasn’t drunk when I drew the others.”
“The guy in the coat?”
“Right. It’s not much, but—”
“You got this from Acosta’s wife?”
I explained about the man on the corner.
“It’s something,” she said. “I’ll make copies. Cops can show it around to the neighbors. Maybe it’ll jog someone’s memory.” She spread copies of all the crime scene sketches across her desk.
“I want to be sure it’s the same guy doing all the drawings. Last time you told me that the guy was right-handed, neat, and compulsive. Now there are three drawings, so I thought you might see something more.”
“You have any aspirin?”
She rummaged through her bag, came up with Excedrin, handed me a bottle of Poland Spring. “You’re not a drunk, are you?”
“This is the result of three beers. I’m half Jewish; what more can I say?”
She laughed.
I washed down the pill
s and looked at the drawings. “Okay. Yeah, there’s the same mark-making, same angled stroke, same confident drawing style. There’s some talent here too. These are hard poses to draw, particularly the two with all that perspective. There’s a famous painting of Christ laid out in this kind of perspective, by an Italian Renaissance artist, Mantegna.”
“Is this the art history lesson?”
“It came into my mind because there’s something religious about these drawings, like the victims have been crucified.”
“You think it’s got any significance?”
“Maybe he sees his victims as martyrs, or himself as one. Or it could be he’s just showing off, you know, how good he is at drawing—and murder.” I looked from one to another and a thought came to me. “It’s like he imagined their deaths ahead of time.”
“Well, they’re premeditated, of course.”
“Yes. But it’s more than that. It’s like he sees how he’ll kill them by drawing it first, like he’s visualized the murder ahead of time.” I tapped the drawing of the black man from Brooklyn. “Here, a guy taking a bullet to the chest. He’s drawn it, then carried it out. Maybe it’s his process, his ritual.”
Terri nodded. “But it doesn’t tell us why he selected these victims. And it can’t be random.”
“What do we know about the victims’ backgrounds?”
“Vic number one was a college senior, twenty-one, going to get his car parked in a lot three blocks from the bar where he’d been with friends.”
“And the friends didn’t see anything? No one following them?”
“They were at the bar when he was killed. According to their statements they didn’t see a thing.”
“And the second?”
“Harrison Stone. Came out of the subway, walked four blocks, boom, shot dead. There was an elderly couple down the street, but they didn’t see it happen. Woman says she saw someone hovering over the body, but had no idea what was going on till they got closer, and by then whoever was leaning over him was gone.”
“Any description?”
“Male.” She frowned.
“And her companion, he see anything?”
“He’s blind. Literally.”
“What about traffic? Maybe a cabdriver saw something?”
“Dead-end street. Virtually no traffic.”
“You said the victim walked four blocks. So the unsub could have shot him earlier, but waited. So he must have known about the dead-end street.” I closed my eyes and tried to picture it, but couldn’t. “I should go to the scene. And I want to talk to the woman who saw the man leaning over the body. She might have a picture in her mind that she doesn’t even know is there.”
Terri’s face brightened. Clearly, this was what she wanted from me.
“I’ve just got to do some paperwork,” she said. “Give me an hour and we can go to Brooklyn together.”
I liked the idea of that.
“Afterward you can talk to the college kid’s roommate. It’s a long shot. He wasn’t on the scene, but he was there just before it went down.” Russo looked into my eyes. “We’ve got three dead men, Rodriguez. Someone had to have seen something.”
Terri closed the door behind Nate and glanced down at the sketches he’d made—the man in the long coat, the scary close-up of the eye. Maybe the Brooklyn witness could add more. One thing for sure: She’d been right about Rodriguez. And now, with the G looking over her shoulder, she needed all the help she could get.
She thought back to the meeting earlier that morning, Agent Monica Collins throwing around terms like methodology and victimology like she had invented them, asking Terri if she understood. She just smiled, said, “Yes, I think I’ve got it, but thanks so much for asking.” Bitch. Why was it women were always so shitty to one another? Wasn’t there supposed to be some sort of sisterhood? Not so she ever noticed. At least with the men it was right out there, grabbing your ass or ignoring you. The women, they were all smiles while they cut you off at the knees.
Denton had run the meeting, acting like he actually knew something about the case, though it had been Terri who’d briefed him, written everything in simple prose he could regurgitate. He hadn’t thanked her, not that she expected he would. He was too busy charming Agent Collins, smiling at her with that sexy grin of his, flirting with the bureau, not the woman, though poor Agent Collins didn’t seem to know that. Poor Agent Collins, my ass.
For now, the G team was collecting data and feeding it back to Quantico. Nobody had said anything about the NYPD quitting the investigation, not yet. Three different precincts involved, and now the G. What a mess. The feds wanted full reports and full cooperation. No doubt full credit too.
Terri glanced at the crime scene drawings she’d laid out for Rodriguez. Three men—one black, one Hispanic, one white. If it hadn’t been for the college kid, the white guy, she would be thinking racial angle, but this didn’t make any sense. So what was it that was nagging at the back of her mind?
14
Perry Denton popped a five-milligram Valium into his mouth and washed it down with decaf. It wasn’t that he needed it—he could quit at any time—it relaxed him, that’s all, and these days he needed to relax. He picked up the phone after the sixth annoying ring.
“What time will you be home, Perry?”
“Why?”
“Because we have guests, remember?”
No, he did not remember. And hadn’t he specifically told his secretary to screen his calls, especially his wife’s?
This morning’s meeting with the feds was still on his mind. He was glad they were taking the case, and before the media got hold of the fact that it was a fucking serial killer and there was a media sideshow that he would have to deal with to calm the city’s residents.
“I’ll be home when I get home, baby. I’ve got a lot of shit to deal with.”
Damn. His job was supposed to be administrative, to oversee the workings of the various NYPD departments; he was not responsible for every fucking psycho who decided to snuff a few blacks and Hispanics. And couldn’t the guy have killed them in the neighborhoods where that sort of thing was acceptable? The college kid was the real problem, from a wealthy family who would be making a lot of noise if they didn’t get some answers, and soon. Denton couldn’t decide whom he disliked more, rich people or poor people.
“What time are you coming home, Perry?” His wife’s singsong voice cut into his thoughts. “It’s embarrassing, always having to make excuses for you.”
“So don’t make them.” He slammed the receiver into its cradle and shouted, “Denise!”
His office door opened and a heavyset woman stood in the frame.
“Where were you? Aren’t you supposed to answer my phone, screen my calls?”
“Yes, sir, but I was down the hall copying those documents you’d asked for.”
Denton sighed, extended his hand and took the papers. Damn it, did he have to do everything himself? He waited till the woman left his office, then found the number he’d written on a Post-it, and stared at it. It was risky, but less risky than his current situation. And he’d already set the wheels in motion, put half the money in an off-shore account. Now he had to buy another crap cell phone and make the final call.
Monica Collins had spent the night going over everything—case reports, background checks, autopsy results, ballistics, crime scene pictures. She was feeling a mix of excitement and anxiety, the result of too many unanswered questions and three cups of coffee. She had forwarded everything to her associates back at Behavioral Science, but knew BSS moved slowly, particularly these days with the “Oakland Sniper” getting all the attention from the media and priority from the bureau. Six killings in six months. Last she heard, the agent who’d been supervising that case had been transferred to somewhere in Washington State, and not one of the scenic parts.
Well, that was not going to happen to her. Not after six years of undergrad and postgrad work, then recruited by the bureau only to sit behind a
desk for eight years while her college girlfriends got married and had babies. She had finally gotten out from behind that Quantico desk and she was going to stay out. She looked around her temporary quarters at Manhattan FBI and liked what she saw. She liked the city too. And she liked New York’s Chief of Department Perry Denton, the kind of man who rarely, if ever, paid any attention to her. Maybe it was just the case, but she thought she’d detected something a bit more from him.
She glanced up at the bulletin board and the crime scene photos of the three victims she had tacked to it along with copies of the drawings that had been pinned to their dead bodies.
Serial killers had always held a fascination for her, particularly the handsome ones like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, the idea that one could be seduced to their death both terrifying and thrilling. Bundy had been her favorite until she had read about the kid who called himself Tony the Tiger from the Color Blind case two years ago. She’d paid him a visit—strictly for observational and educational purposes—at a state hospital for the criminally insane. She’d never forget it, his almost girlish good looks, blue eyes cold and gorgeous, the seductive, unsettling smile. Thinking about him now brought a chill, and another emotion she did not want to consider.
Collins looked back at the crime scene pictures and wondered about this unsub. All they had surmised so far was that the guy lived somewhere in the geographic vicinity, had experience handling weapons, and could draw.
She had her two full-time field officers, Richardson and Archer, combing through the tax records of every former soldier living in the tri-state area, anyone who held a job in commercial art, design, or architecture, as well as students and professors at the local art schools. Maybe something would pop up, though that was not the way it usually happened, and she knew it.
Anatomy of Fear Page 6