American Devil (4 page)

Harper sat down. ‘What’s the MO?’

‘She’s been strangled. Same ritual - torture cuts, left naked. She was also posed.’

‘Posed how?’ said Harper, pen in hand, tracing the outline of a rock on his notebook.

‘Like she’s praying.’

‘Hands tied together?’

‘Yeah, with copper wire.’ Lafayette paused. ‘I want you to take a look before they take the body. No commitment. Just give us something, Tom. Anything. For God’s sake.’

‘I’m not ready to go back, Captain.’

‘How about you just take a look at this girl, tell me what you can? Maybe what you see will help us nail this bastard. Call it a leaving gift.’

Harper was silent. The figure of a girl with her hands in prayer appeared in black ink on the page in front of him.

‘I’m in a black Impala outside your apartment. I’ll wait ten minutes. If it’s a no, then whatever you go on to do, Harper, good luck and all that. You were a first-rate cop, the best. Don’t ever forget that while you’re down there in Vegas hunting slot-machine fixers.’

 

D
arkness was holding fast over Ward’s Island. Only the distant lights of Kirby Psychiatric Hospital and the near glow of the crime scene were visible from across Hell Gate Bridge. The whole area was still being scoured by Crime Scene Unit detectives.

The east wind had blustered all day and now raced across the island, whipping up the surface of the water and making it dance against the black rocks. Across the river, Manhattan’s teeming grid of coloured lights reflected in the dark water like a street-level rainbow promising wealth and fulfilment. But there on Ward’s Island, on the rough grass against the rocks, lay a naked body lapped by the shallow surf. Her guts were torn open and a couple of seagulls had stayed around after dark to take what they could.

The icy wind was also freezing the four officers standing in a half-circle above the corpse, their bomber jackets zipped chin high, their eyes streaming and their faces pale as pig skin. In silence, they stared down at the mutilated body. Officer James Cob was stamping his feet and playing around with his flashlight.

‘Hey, Hernandez, did you eat already?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Hernandez. ‘How the fuck could I eat out here?’

‘Here, you like fresh meat?’ Cob shone his torch on to the corpse.

‘Serious, Cob, knock it off, buddy. You’re making me sick here.’

‘It’s your fucking diet that’s churning your guts,’ Officer Lees put in. ‘He had three hot dogs and a doughnut in the wagon.’

‘Why the fuck is she marrying you, Hernandez?’ said Cob. ‘Can anyone explain how this big fuck is getting hitched to a ninety-five-pound looker? These fat guys are taking all our women.’

‘Fuck you and your mother, Cob, I’ve got the magic touch. They’ll be crying out for more when they feel these.’ Hernandez held up his chubby fingers and wiggled them in the air. ‘They call me the feather, my touch is so light. I’m like a butterfly wing. They just keep howling for more.’

The guys laughed aloud in the darkness. For a moment they forgot that they were on a city shore next to a murder victim. Then silence seemed to capture the small huddle again. Their conversations kept dying out like a match in the wind.

Harper watched from a distance, a shadow in a black coat. It wasn’t his case, he was still on charges that would no doubt end in a termination, but he already felt responsible. And being out in the cold sure beat sitting in his apartment and letting the emptiness swirl over and over in his head. He’d done enough of that. Maybe he had even let the self-pity take him over.

He couldn’t help but feel the crackle of his nerves at the sight of the crime scene. This was his territory. He felt the tingling at the tip of his fingers like he used to. He breathed deep and walked towards the officer guarding the yellow tape. Harper had a vague outline of the first kill in his mind, mainly from the secondary sources - no real facts yet, just the fragments of other people’s horror and a bit extra that the newspapers liked to sprinkle across the story by way of speculation and sensation.

The uniform read the name on the log when he signed in. ‘Nice to see you out here, Detective Harper. You taking the case?’

Harper looked at the young officer. ‘No.’

‘Wish you were. This guy’s bad news. I saw what he’d done.’

Harper nodded and moved towards the lights of the crime scene. He could hear the officers laughing as he approached and saw their little game of dead woman peek-a-boo with their flashlights. He wasn’t impressed. Whose investigation was this? It looked wide open - no structure, no urgency, just a forensic team and a bunch of patrolmen. The detectives from Blue Team had all left. Since when did Blue Team let things slip this far? The whole of the NYPD should be on top of this case. He walked directly towards the officers and stamped on the edge of a sheet of corrugated iron. It clattered violently.

The four men turned with a start and pointed their flashlights towards the noise. Harper stared right back at them, his granite face contorted by the torch beams. ‘Get your fucking lights out of my face, gentlemen.’

He moved slowly across to them, shining his own torch into the officers’ faces one by one, taking it all in. ‘This is a crime scene. Get away from the body. And have some damn respect for the dead.’ His light remained on Cob’s face.

‘Nice of you to turn up, Detective,’ said Cob. ‘All the big boys have come and gone already.’

Harper scowled and looked down at the corpse. He felt the anger rise in his knotted muscles and flap like a black flag inside his mind, wiping away all other thoughts. An intense concentration formed in his head.

He turned to the officers. ‘All right. Move back. Get out of my way. One of you get across the top on the right and shine a light from that side. Get a move on! Move! Now! You, down on to those rocks.’ He took Hernandez by the shoulder and marched him to the water. ‘Get down on that rock and shine a light for me from there.’

‘I’ll get my shoes and pants wet,’ said Hernandez.

‘Do I look like I care? Go.’

Hernandez looked down at his shiny shoes and pressed pants. His foot stepped down on to the black rock Harper had indicated and he watched his ankle submerge slowly beneath dark freezing water. The other two cops stared at Harper.

Harper started to pick his way towards the body. He reached the rock as Hernandez’s light flashed across her face. The light from the officer on the right spread out across her side. It was a horrific sight. She was a young woman in her early twenties. Her skin was white as alabaster. Her naked body lay flat on its back, her hands wired together on her chest as if in prayer, her legs raised and spread wide apart. Her feet and ankles had been jammed into two rock crevices. All over, wet petals stuck to her skin and the rock. Harper picked one up from the rock and turned it in his hand.

He looked closely at the body, careful not to touch or move anything that might be evidence. He was working out the sequence, trying to spot the small things that didn’t quite fit. The woman’s hair was short and scruffy, her face thin, with well-defined cheekbones. Harper leaned in and looked more closely. His flashlight moved slowly over the corpse. Ten minutes was all he gave himself. He knew he didn’t have long before the coroner arrived to take the body off the rocks, so he pulled himself back up to the bank. He stood and faced the two officers who hadn’t moved. ‘Why are you still hanging around here? Haven’t you got something to do?’

‘Before we take orders, let’s see your shield, Detective,’ said Cob with a sneer. ‘You ain’t got no ID showing. Maybe you ain’t a detective at all.’

Harper turned to the poor woman who’d been executed on the cold rock, probably screaming her lungs out where no one could hear. The killer didn’t have any human feelings at all and now Officer James Cob wanted to bust his balls.

Harper walked across to Cob and stood face to face. ‘You want to know who I am?’

‘Yeah, and what you’re doing here.’

‘And what I’m doing here, is that right?’

‘Yeah. You’re so quick, you should be a detective.’

‘I’m nobody but I’m here to find out why this woman was attacked.’ Harper felt his back teeth lock together.

‘Personally,’ said Cob, ‘I’d say she was asking for it, going out dressed like that. She ought to wear a little more, wouldn’t you say?’

‘You think, do you?’

‘She ain’t got much on,’ said Cob.

‘You want to know what it feels like to be down on those rocks, Officer?’ Harper reached, quick as a rattlesnake, and snapped his big hand round Cob’s wrist. His eyes stared hard.

‘Get the fuck off me!’ Cob shouted.

‘You think it’s funny that a woman’s been raped and executed?’

‘No. I was ... Come on . . .’

Harper pulled Cob’s arm hard and shoved him down towards the corpse, flicking his leg across the officer’s weight. Cob fell hard on to the muddy bank, a look of stark panic on his face. He was badly winded and Harper still had his wrist in a vice-like grip.

‘Doesn’t feel like you’re sorry, Cob.’ Harper dragged Cob towards the edge of the bank.

‘What the fuck are you doing, you madman?’

‘Have a look at her face, Cob. Do you think it’s funny? Do you think it’s funny what he did? Look at her, you animal.’

Cob, with his face in the cold dirt, stared down at the result of hatred and violence jammed on the rock.

‘You think your girlfriend or mother would think this is so fucking amusing?’

‘Please, man.’

‘How fucking sorry are you, Cob?’

‘Very sorry. Very, very sorry.’

Harper released Cob. ‘Don’t ever talk like that about a victim, you asshole.’ He twitched and strode off over the grassy bank, taking huge strides, his black coat flapping behind him.

Cob rose from the mud, his back sodden, his wrist aching. He looked at the three officers, Hernandez ankle deep in water, Lees pale at the edge, Poulter back down from his vantage point.

‘You fucking nutcase, Cob,’ said Poulter.

‘What? Who the fuck was that guy?’

‘You don’t know? That was Tom Harper.’

‘What’s his problem?’

‘Oh, there ain’t just one. Everything’s his fucking problem,’ said Poulter.

Harper’s silhouette disappeared over the brow of the incline, leaving the rest to North Manhattan Homicide to clear up and assess. He had what he needed. There was a dead woman on his ground. A young woman raped and murdered for no reason. This was not a random strike - the killer had chosen a defenceless victim simply because she was weak. It wasn’t fear that was knocking against Harper’s heart now, it was cold determination.

As he walked, the trickle of images was already forming. Harper’s mind worked like a hundred cogs, assessing information and throwing out conclusions. He figured that the attacker had come at her from behind. A sign of his weakness. He’d taken her out with a blackjack; it’d left a three-inch gash on the side of her head. He didn’t even have to struggle with any resistance. Then he’d somehow got her to his car and driven her out to Ward’s. From the road, he’d dragged her to the rocks, raped her while she was still out, then cut her open and watched her begin to die. Finally, he strangled her.

Harper reached the top of the hill. He turned and looked down. The body had been dragged across the ground. Harper followed the line in the grass. The girl was maybe 110 pounds, but the line wasn’t true or consistent. Maybe the killer was physically weak. He couldn’t even hump a 110-pound body across the ground without stopping every ten yards. Or he was carrying something and using only one arm to drag her. Harper looked again at the drag marks with his flashlight. Yeah, the killer was carrying something with one arm and dragging her with the other. Scrub weak, this killer was physically strong. Very.

Manhattan Psychiatric Center was only a hundred yards away. A possible link, he thought. Ward’s Island was home to two psychiatric hospitals. Most of New York’s criminally insane were within a mile of this spot.

Harper looked across to the grounds of MPC. Plenty of places to hide. He looked back at the officers on the shore. He let the thought about what he’d do if he found the guy flood his mind. The guy who’d attacked and forced himself on this woman - called her names, shouted at her, made her weep and wet herself and shudder with fear, and then, when she was most terrified, slashed at her with his knife. Slow and painful beyond description. Then there was an act that was strangely redemptive - he scattered petals on her body and put her hands together in prayer. Harper knew why Lafayette had wanted him personally on the case. Killers like this played by different rules.

Harper pulled open the door and got into the Impala. He was thinking, still working out the movements that had been this woman’s last.

‘What you got for me?’ said Lafayette.

‘Victim’s not from the hospital, she’s too high class - she’s got an expensive dye job, perfect nails and enough dental work to set you back twenty thousand. She’s in her early twenties and she’s been well looked after. Her hair’s been hacked off. My guess is that he’s taken her hair as his trophy. Looks like her right shoulder’s been dislocated. So he’s abducted her somewhere in the city and then driven her here. He’s dragged her across the ground by one arm. I’d say that the killer has probably been scoping this area for some time and possibly the victim too. She’s a type. Similar to Mary-Jane. Blonde, refined, wealthy. The killer might even have a reason to be here. I’d say that he’s probably been to and from this hospital many times. He might be a patient or even a nurse. That’s a good spot he’s picked. I think he worked the sightlines. The waterline on the rocks is invisible from beyond this hill. So he’s taken the trouble to get her out of sight so he can spend time with her. That’s some careful working out he’s done. Also, he probably drinks. I’d say he needs to drink before he does this. It’s just a hunch. Check traffic, see if they pulled over any drunk drivers in the last couple of months. He’s tried to make it look like a random attack, but I think this guy’s clever. I think he knew exactly who she was and where he was taking her.