City of Woe

by Christopher Ryan

“Ever have anything like these index cards? Hear of some other case with notes?”

  “The Son of Sam wrote to Jimmy Breslin, who had a column for The Daily News at the time. Jack the Ripper wrote some notes. A few others. Maybe this guy is a fan, trying to emulate one of them.”

  “Could be, but he hasn’t tipped his hand as to who his hero is, if that’s the case. And why index cards?”

  “Maybe he just has access to lots of index cards and he’s a cheapskate. Maybe they were available first time he decided to leave notes, as a signature.” Pop loved talking police work again. Any hint of pain had vanished. And Mallory loved being able to offer it to him. “Some of it is ego. One of those ‘are you as smart as I am’ kind of things. But really, it’s compulsion.”

  “Okay, but what do I do with that? How’s that going to help me catch this guy?”

  “You gotta ask yourself, what can’t he help doing? Forget what he announces, Francis, look for patterns. What does he keep going back to? The little things will trip him up. Always do.”

  “You think he’ll give himself away in the index cards?”

  “Probably wants to.” Pop started coughing, and didn’t stop for a long agonizing moment.

  “Pop?”

  Mallory’s father, shook his head, fought the cough down, tried ignoring it. “Happens… more often… than people think.”

  “Pop, you okay?”

  He coughed, a hacking, phlegmy struggle. The sound suddenly got distant, and his father spit into a wad of tissues, then motioned toward the pitcher of water. Mallory poured a drink, tried to hold it up to his father’s mouth. Pop gave him a look, took the small plastic cup, drank. His voice became a bit clearer. “I’m fine… Go back to those cards…” The next coughing spell went on so long, Mallory panicked.

  “Pop, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  His father waved him off, finished the coughing jag, took a deep breath. “Just getting tired. I’m gonna go lay down. I’ll see you Thursday, all right?”

  “Sure, Pop, but I’m concerned about your—”

  “Kiss my bananas for me.” Pop lay back on the pillows, closed his eyes, leaving Mallory standing there awkwardly.

  Without opening his eyes, Pop spoke, “Check those cards… he’s speaking… right to you.”

  Mallory knew better than to make a case over the coughing. After a minute or so, he patted Pop’s leg, and walked out.

  NINETEEN

  On the Six train. First car. Some older guy sits reading the Daily News, holding it up, obscuring his face. But the hands are familiar. I’m holding something, a stack of baseball cards. Lots of pinstripes. All the faces look haunted.

  Something’s burning. Awful smell. I look out the train’s front window. We’re heading for a blood red brick wall—

  Mallory sat up quickly. The bedroom was pitch black except for a thin crack of streetlight sneaking through between the window frame and blinds, and the red glow of Gina’s digital clock. It read 3:47, which meant it was around one a.m. A Gina thing Mallory was used to.

  He knew he wasn’t getting any more sleep. Gina rolled over at the deep metallic noise of the springs as he climbed out of bed. The sweat pants he was wearing would suffice. He threw on Timberlands, not bothering to lace them, quietly felt for, then extracted a Yankee windbreaker from the closet, went down to the living room. He grabbed his keys, slowly turned the front door locks, trying to muffle the clack of the cylinders. The ugly brown front door looked even more hideous in the dark. He stepped out, closed it, eased the battered, dirty storm door shut, shuffled to his car, opened the lock, climbed into the driver’s seat.

  His briefcase sat on the front passenger seat. He refused to allow the materials it held into his home. Mallory popped its locks, took out a small flashlight. Digging through a few files, he found the photocopied pages of the index cards, each set stapled and labeled separately. He folded down the sun visor, clipped the flashlight to it, aimed the narrow beam straight down onto his lap, and opened the first folder. It contained copies of the cards from the first murder, arranged in the order they were found, three to a page. The handwriting shifted from rushed and wild to tight and tense. He read them again and again, searching for answers. What is he saying?

  Without warning, someone tapped the passenger side window with a dark object. Gun? Mallory threw the Xeroxes aside, reached for his — he’d left his gun inside. The attacker was pulling at the door; Mallory could see… a flowered nightshirt. Gina. Eyes heavily-lidded, still mostly asleep, slowly waving—

  The phone.

  Mallory unlocked the passenger side door. Gina opened it, leaned down into the car, and held the phone to him, mumbling sleepily. “Lieutenant Danvers.” She never even questioned why he was out in the car in the middle of the night. She simply shuffled back to the house. Mallory loved that woman.

  “Mallory?”

  “Lieu?”

  “There’s more to investigate at the hotel.”

  “Lieu, we stayed until every bit of the crime scene was recorded. We interviewed staff and witnesses. We covered the crime scene three ways to Sunday.”

  “Apparently, your perp stayed, and kept working.”

  TWENTY

  By 2:30 AM, Mallory and Gunner were back at the hotel. Uniforms were now everywhere, many more than during the previous day’s investigation. They guarded entrances, elevators, stairwells, the lobby. Mallory showed his gold shield to a bored uniform. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “That would be Lieutenant Danvers.”

  The partners exchanged shocked glances. Gunner smirked humorlessly, “Maybe we’re already off the case.”

  “Back to walking beats.” Mallory added.

  “Steady midnights.”

  “Hunts Point.”

  “Always in winter.”

  “During a snowstorm.”

  Gunner grinned. “Heaven.”

  They strode quickly across the lobby.

  Even at this hour, Lieutenant Danvers was dressed well but conservatively, and clean shaven Danvers turned away from the front desk, and beckoned them to follow. He led the partners down the hall of executive offices, traveling a considerable distance before speaking. “The staff is unwilling to be seen with us, and understandably so.”

  Gunner seemed miffed by the comment. “Why ‘understandably so,’ Lieu?”

  Instead of answering, he opened a door, revealing a room lined with filing cabinets. Paper work was the murder weapon here, a mountain of it. All of the cabinets had been emptied; papers piled four feet high in the center of the blandly tiled floor. There were overtime forms, expense reports, pay slips. It would have seemed an innocuous mess except for the well-adorned foot sticking out from beneath. The glossy black shoe was expensive, stylish. So was the black silk sock. And the tailored, sharply creased, gray pant leg.

  Mallory edged around one side of the paper mountain, observing an elbow and portion of an upper arm clothed in dark blue. The angle suggested the center of the mound had been formed over the victim’s head. Gunner stepped around the other side, careful not to touch any of the evidence. After a moment, he called out, “Mal, look.”

  He did. Index cards stuck out from beneath the victim’s shirt cuff. Worst of all was the hand; small, delicate, effeminate, clutching a crisp white linen cloth. Gunner paled. “This is Hanky Man.”

  “Colleagues identified him as James Farley. We’ll get positive ID once Crime Scene works the room, but this was your liaison yesterday, correct?” Danvers didn’t wait for an answer; he already knew. “The presence of index cards suggests we’ve got an aggressive, competitive killer on our hands.”

  Gunner looked up from the body. “Competitive, Lieu?”

  Danvers shook his head sympathetically. “Sorry to say it guys, but the killer chose this man precisely because he was with you. I say competitive because this guy is speaking directly to you now, challenging you.”

  Mallory pointed to the index cards peeking from the victim’s cuff
. “And his challenge might be worse than it seems.”

  Danvers and Gunner fell silent. The top card showed a dark Roman numeral:

  IV

  “If our friend here was number four, we’ve got problems. Whitfield was marked number three,” Mallory looked up at his partner and supervisor. “So, where are murders number one and two?”

  Danvers shrugged. “William Hill, of course. He was your number one.”

  Mallory stood up. “With all due respect Lieu, he wasn’t marked as such.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The index cards found at the crime scenes here were each marked with Roman numerals. The cards at Will Hill’s crime scene were not.”

  Gunner nodded. “He’s right, Lieu. No number, Roman or otherwise.”

  Mallory headed for the door. “I’ve got to get a file in my car. Then I’ll show you both what I mean. While I’m gone, see if we can get Crime Scene to release the index cards.”

  He returned quickly, file in hand. He showed Gunner and Danvers a page he had dog-eared. The copy was clear enough, but the handwriting was small and cramped, which made it hard to read:

  I spy him sneaking away. He is a pre-level opportunist, nothing more. Hide in plain sight will he? Leave his seat as if to pursue the guilty? Clever soul. Clever soul.

  “So?” Danvers asked.

  “It’s right there,” Mallory urged.

  The other two read the passage again, glanced at each other, shook their heads.

  Mallory sighed. “We believe the writer is referring to Will, yes?” The others agreed. “Well, then, there it is; he clearly describes Will as a ‘pre-level opportunist, nothing more.’”

  Danvers raised an eyebrow skeptically. “And this is significant because?”

  “What if the reference to ‘pre-level’ goes with the Roman numerals? That would suggest our guy is basing his actions on some specific organizational method. It seems to me that each murder is assigned a numbered level. Will was pre-level, whatever that means, so he didn’t get a number. Whitfield was a level three, our pal Hanky Man a level four. Our guy is building to something, using a pre-existing pattern of some kind to which he keeps referring. Find the organizational model, we will be that much closer to understanding the pattern, which might help us figure out how to catch him.”

  Danvers hitched his shoulders. “Any idea what organizer he’s using?”

  “Not yet. But we’ve got to search the entire hotel.”

  Gunner and Danvers said it together: “Why?”

  “To find the bodies assigned Roman numerals one and two.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  After a two hour search, utilizing of 40 detectives and uniformed officers, Mallory and Gunner were called up to room 1013. A lone uniform, a veteran by the bored expression he wore under a thick, black, and woefully dated biker mustache that roamed down to his chin, stood outside. Mallory gave the old timer a Bronx nod —one slight upward movement of the chin. “Thought we’d see a mob of cops here?”

  The officer chuckled, returned the nod. He said the others were continuing the search. “Apparently the circus inside just ain’t enough for’em.”

  Mallory, Gunner and Danvers entered the crime scene.

  There were two corpses, one male, one female. The room was thick with the smell of perfume, a bottle of Eternity sitting prominently atop a dresser, the lone untouched piece of furniture in the room. Accompanying Eternity was an opened prescription bottle of Viagra, on its side, contents spilled out, seemingly arranged for display. The clock radio had been placed alongside them, plugged in, turned to a 24-hour a day love song station. The lights had been set low, casting warm, romantic shadows on the couple. Danvers doused this mood, turning on every light.

  Both victims seemed to be in their 40s, him with torso thickening in the middle and carefully gelled and coiffed hair thinning up top, her with a physique so impressively trim that cosmetic surgery came to mind, and a new dye job vitalizing her chestnut hair, which fell luxuriously across her face.

  The air conditioning was set on high, the vents pointed right at the couple, whose expensive business clothing and under garments had been sliced up, especially around the sex organs, which were exposed on both. Mallory theorized the clothing —his Armani, according to a flapping jacket label, hers exquisite but not readily identifiable— had been sliced to strips so they would be blown about by the manufactured wind to conjure an unsettling illusion of flying.

  The bodies had been carefully posed atop the room’s rearranged furniture. The man’s once broad shoulders, thick arms and jowly head rested on the bed nearest the door, facing away from the entrance, as if moving toward the woman, who was arranged along the edge of the other bed. His head was held up at an angle by his left fist. The thick torso lay on its side. A chair had been used to hold up his exposed butt and the pharmaceutically-enhanced erection. A desk had been moved to support his splayed legs, the lower one bent a la Superman in flight. The legs angled around so the toes pointed toward his female companion as well. His right arm extended out, reaching for her.

  She lay across the second bed, further into the room, spike-heeled feet hanging just off the edge, pointing towards her partner, curvaceous legs in black thigh-high stockings laying akimbo, one bent forward like her partner’s. Pillows under her hip raised her nude butt, arching her back sensuously. Her torso angled down, ample breasts, also exposed, hanging slightly. The nipples were raised, suggesting arousal, but probably more in response to fear at the moment of death, or the intensely cold air blowing in on them from the room’s air conditioning system.

  The shoulder, collarbone, neck and head rested on a night stand moved midway between the twin beds. The face was positioned toward the man’s, as if they were gazing into each other’s dead eyes. The woman’s right arm was extended forward, reaching for the man’s. The finger tips of their hands just barely touched. Looking closer, Mallory realized their fingertips had been glued together.

  “They were not even here long enough to mess up the beds,” Gunner offered.

  “Chosen somewhere else?” Mallory said. “Followed up by our guy? Pushed in as they entered?”

  Danvers nodded. “Could be. So, who are they?”

  Gunner gave a slight shrug. “Suburban couple in the city celebrating an anniversary?”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Married people checking into a hotel in the City bring luggage, at least an overnight bag.”

  Gunner nodded. “Sooo, this was gonna be a quickie?”

  Mallory stepped around the crime scene. He looked from the man to the woman and back several times, opening himself to what the bodies could tell him. The male was closer to the door, near a small bathroom. From there, Mallory’s eyes followed a bloody trail back across the Berber rug, up the wafting remains of the guy’s once-impressive suit jacket, past the blood-stained collar of his shirt, and across his formerly cool Jerry Garcia tie, which now fluttered across a pulverized ear and dented skull. “This guy was hit hard, probably knocked unconscious, in the bathroom, then brought over here.”

  The detective squatted to get a better view of the victim’s bloodied left hand, positioned under the head, partially to hold it up, partially to hide what Mallory was searching for. He looked at the fist, a simple gold wedding band tight around a fattened ring finger; between the thumb and the curled, defiled digits, index cards had been shoved. Mallory pointed these out silently.

  “More love notes,” Gunner said as he flipped open a narrow notebook.

  Mallory gave a nod, staring at the couple. “His hand is covered with blood. But look at the cards.”

  Gunner, grunting, joined Mallory in a squat. The cards were unstained; only red flecks clung to them. “The blood had dried by the time the cards were placed. Our boy took awhile.”

  Mallory nodded. “He waited for that hand to dry before he placed the cards. He may have even written the cards here, after setting all this up, while it dried.”

  “Some set o
f balls.” Gunner muttered, continuing to take notes.

  “Or a worsening pathology,” Danvers countered.

  “Just what we need,” Mallory turned, looking closely at the female. Pushing her hair away, his gut clenched. Her jaw was smashed, her mouth ruined. And that mouth was the single most recognizable aspect of what remained of her face. The killer’s fury had been localized on this victim. The funeral would be closed casket.

  Gunner, still next to Mallory, gave a low, slow whistle. Danvers joined the party. “She received more attention than he did.”

  “Transference issues? Marital frustration? Sexual identity issues?” Mallory offered.

  The woman’s nails were done in a perfect French manicure; no sign of struggle. The knuckles and skin texture were beginning to show signs of age, but had been pampered. On the right hand ring finger was a gold band with two aquamarine jewels embedded in it. The left arm was tucked under the torso, the hand hung casually off the bed. Its ring finger was adorned with a modest but attractive engagement ring, and a gold wedding band with a delicate design engraved along its edges.

  “Engagement, wedding, and, on the right hand, mother’s ring,” Danvers offered.

  Gunner smiled. “And the obligatory index card plain as day.”

  In the left hand, between the index and middle finger was a single index card.

  “We’ll get to that,” Mallory said. “Look,” he pointed at the left hands, first the man’s, then the woman’s.

  Gunner nodded. “The wedding rings don’t match. This might look like fancy digs, but these two turned it into a no-tell motel.”

  Lieutenant Danvers nodded. “We’ll make a detective out of you yet, Gennaro.”

  “Wait. I’m on a roll.” Over at the small desk, he bent down to retrieve something from the waste basket. His gloved hand came out with index cards. Lots of them. Some were scrawled on. Some featured violent cross outs. Many were crumpled. A few were ripped to shreds. “What a shock; our guy ain’t quite Shakespeare.”

  Mallory slipped the single card from the woman’s hand. “Let’s see the final draft.” One side offered only a Roman numeral: