Gladyss of the Hunt (43 page)

“I was up on Twenty-third when I got the 10-13,” Eddie was
saying. “I recognized your address. But then as I was coming in . . . I guess it must've been him . . .”

“Who?”

“Your actor buddy, Noel. I saw him on the corner of Sixth Avenue. Just now.”

“Shit! He must've made bail.”

“If it wasn't him, it sure as hell looked just like him.”

“What was he doing?”

“Getting into a cab on Sixteenth Street.”

“For God's sake, check Maggie!” I said feeling around for her.

“Relax,” he said. “She's right here and she's breathing, no apparent injuries. From her pupils, it looks like she's been drugged. And she has this . . .” I heard an odd crinkling sound. “Her ankles and wrists were bound up.”

“But she's not cut in any way?” I didn't remember any blood.

“No, she looks okay.”

I heard a faint thump that might've come from a neighboring apartment.

“Did you check the bathroom?” Eddie asked quietly.

“No, didn't get a chance. I heard Crispin Marachino knock and call Maggie's name, then he went in and it sounded like there was a scuffle and a loud bang. The door opened and slammed shut again, and then a minute or two later I thought I heard a scream.”

At that moment there was another loud bang. I heard Eddie announce, “Police!” and kick open the bathroom door.

“What's going on?”

“Oh shit!” he said.

“What do you see?” I yelled.

“It's Marachino. He looks pretty bad. Holden must've attacked him too.”

Eddie spoke into his walkie talkie. “Patrol post thirteen, civilian emergency. Need a second EMS forthwith.” He then relayed my address and other information.

I was crouching next to the TV set, which was turned to CNN, and over Eddie's voice I could just hear the newscaster: “
We're live on Centre Street, where movie star Noel Holden is about to be released on two point five million dollars bail
.”

Presumably Eddie could see Noel's picture on the TV, because
he paused abruptly. For a moment I thought he had simply made a mistake. We both listened as the newscaster finished talking about Noel's imminent release.

“On New Year's Eve, when you told me you were a virgin, it was snowing outside. Do you remember that?”

The coldness in his voice, its air of stark finality, made me realize it wasn't an error. I was in serious trouble.

I heard the doorbell buzz in my apartment next door.

“As pure as the driven snow in this filthy, fucked-up city, that's what I thought. I should've just shoved my thick cock into your tight little snatch right then. But . . . I treasured your purity. The fact that someone as beautiful as you, who must've had to fight off countless assholes trying to fuck you, had chosen me to give me your gift—”

“I
did
choose you Eddie!” I tried to focus just on breathing in and out, trying to re-enter the moment, even though I knew he was going to kill me.

“You were so tall and strong . . . and pure of heart . . . I just thought, this blonde beauty is mine to protect and cherish. I know it's a cliché, but I thought that we really were destined for each other . . .”

As he was talking, I could hear other buzzers being rung from downstairs. They were trying to get into the building.

“I mean,
no one
is still a virgin at twenty-three. But then what do you go and do? You take your beautiful little rose . . .”

“Eddie, just listen to me, please!” I was still on my knees, my weight resting on my calves. My fingertips slowly stroked the ground around me until I could feel the muzzle of my gun, lying where I had dropped it.

“. . . and you go and find the lowest of the low, and you part your beautiful strong thighs for that vile scumbag. You sacrificed your purity to jackals!”

“Please calm down, Eddie” I managed to say.

“I know I must sound crazy, but here's the kicker—I'm not.”

“NYPD!” I heard a voice outside the door, and the crackle of radios.

“I want you to put down . . . your weapon,” I said with a tremor. It crossed my mind that if he did shoot me now, at least he'd get caught.

“You don't even . . . I was still on duty
after
that fashion show. . . Remember that awful night? Everyone booing you even though you were the only one doing what was right! I should've killed all of them right there.”

“Calm down,” I said, to him and myself.

“
I
was the one who brought you home that night, when you were drunk off your ass and you tried to arrest that dumb crack whore.”

“Tell me that you didn't kill those people, Eddie.”

“You were so wasted that night, you didn't even realize that
I
was the one who put you in a cab, brought you safely home, and carried you up the stairs in my arms.”

“Eddie, I'm grateful for that, but . . .” My hand was trembling. All I could do was focus on his voice.

“I was the one who undressed you and put you to bed like you were my own.”

“Eddie, I . . .”

“I abandoned my post to bring you home, then once you were asleep, I went back to the precinct to sign out.”

“I'm very grateful, but . . .”

“And when I came back to make sure you were okay, what do you think I found?” Now his voice was boiling with rage.

“I don't care!”

“I found that disgusting creep was
doing
you!” he screamed. “And I would've
married
you!”

The blast from his Glock knocked me flat. I grabbed my gun and fired three times into the blackness until I heard a gasp, and then a thud.

Feet began kicking at Maggie's door.

“Hold on!” I fumbled my way across the room until I located the doorknob. I unlocked it, held my hands in the air and said, “I'm a blind cop, don't shoot.”

“What the hell—” one of them said, presumably seeing Eddie's uniformed body. I explained what had happened.

“You can't be blind,” said one of the cops. “He took three bullets to the head.”

Since O'Ryan was in uniform and I wasn't, they cuffed me. The cops were from the one-zero; none of them were from Midtown. Over the next few minutes I heard more cops pour into the apartment.

All of Eddie's radio calls had been fake, so we had to wait another five minutes for the paramedics to arrive for poor Maggie. Crispin was dead. One of the officers said his skull had been cracked open like an egg. When Annie showed up and my identity was verified, the cuffs were removed. The medics gently taped bandages over my eyes, and I was finally rushed to Saint Vincent's Hospital.

An eye surgeon was waiting for me in the ER. When he heard that I'd had Lasik surgery just hours earlier, he examined my eyes and then explained what must have happened, something about rods and cones. I was too frazzled to take it in.

“Will I be able to see again?” That was all I wanted to know right now.

“Oh yes,” he said. “It'll just require a brief operation.”

I was sedated, and when I awoke the next day, I could see images again, though they were still blurry. I was told that would soon pass. But because of my head injury, I wasn't going home any time soon.

During my convalescence, Annie told me later, a variety of forensic evidence quickly came to light that proved Eddie was definitely our second killer. For starters, the same roofies that had been used to drug both Jane Hansen and Caty Duffy were also found in Maggie's system. And although we couldn't find his knife, blood residues from all three Marilyn victims were found on shoes in O'Ryan's apartment, though he hadn't been on duty at any of the crime scenes. In addition, after the news broke about the killer cop, a honeymooning couple from Toronto came forward to say they'd seen a cop going into the Kings Court Hotel at roughly the same time as Caty Duffy's murder. It had to have been O'Ryan.

But the most damning—and saddest—evidence was found in the meticulously handwritten journals Eddie had kept. Barry said it looked like they had been written in calligraphy. Not only had he kept a diary of the killings, the back pages contained early drafts of the menacing poems he had sent to the Marilyn web site.

Apparently, since I'd been transferred to homicide, Eddie had been lurking in my vicinity every moment when he wasn't at work or asleep. He kept a watch on my building so he could monitor all my comings and goings. Each time I went to yoga or the corner market, he wrote it down.

His artistic handwriting betrayed a discontent that went way
beyond being jealous of Noel; he'd developed paranoid conspiracies about the power of the cult of celebrities, who he felt were constantly undermining American society and morals. I had concerns of my own about the negative effects of our celebrity culture, but I also realized that I had only myself to blame for succumbing to it.

Like Bernie, Eddie had done his research and discovered various details about Noel Holden, including his odd comments about Marilyn Monroe being his mother, and his on-again, off-again affair with Venezia. It appeared that his motive for the killings was to revenge himself for the “abrupt withdrawal of my affection.” That was the phrase he used. Though as I remembered it, he was the one who had done all the withdrawing.

O'Ryan might have been able to continue his murder spree undetected if it hadn't been for his insane fantasy that Noel and Crispin had worked together to rob him of my virtue. This was what had fueled his final rampage: the murder of Crispin and the attempted murder of Maggie, which was to have been loosely timed to Noel's release. He hadn't figured on my walking in on him.

“Not only did you get a plum assignment in Homicide,” Barry said. “At the same time you met and got involved with a Hollywood star. The combined impact of those two things was probably what set him off. There's evidence in earlier journals that he'd long exhibited a pathological level of envy—now he undoubtedly felt he had been cheated out of his girl and a prospective job at the same time.”

Since we'd never be able to interrogate O'Ryan, it would all remain open to endless speculation.

Despite the ordeal that had landed me there, I fondly remember the time I spent healing in St. Vincent's back in 2003. Sadly, it's gone now. After generously serving the Lower West Side of Manhattan since 1849, the hospital abruptly went bankrupt in 2010, prompting an investigation by the DA. Now there are plans to tear it down and build luxury condos—one more thing for O'Flaherty to have gotten mad about, except he died in prison back in 2007.

The evening before I was released from the hospital, Bernie, Alex, and Annie came to visit me and we found ourselves reviewing the case.

“The more I think of what O'Ryan did, the more I appreciate the opportunism of it,” Alex said. “He plugged into an open case that you were assigned to, then subtly twisted the crimes, hoping that we'd arrest Noel, who he believed had displaced him in your heart.”

“And don't forget, Gladyss,” Annie added, “You were the one who said that Noel was a suspect in the first place. He was just giving you what you were initially looking for.”

It was a painful realization. “Shit, if I had never told him that I suspected Noel, the murders of Jane, Caty, Venezia, and Crispin would never have happened.”

“Don't be too hard on yourself,” Bernie said. “A psychopathic killer is a psychopathic killer. If it hadn't been this, he would've eventually gone after someone else, and instead of four murders it might've been forty.”

Annie and Alex headed home after a while to be with their families, so that left me alone with Bernie.

“I talked to Internal Affairs,” he said. “Long story short, I'm back on modified duty pending an investigation.”

“That doesn't sound good.”

“They say they have enough evidence to make a case for dismissal and bring me up on charges.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“There's something called forced retirement—I get three-quarters disability pension if I leave quietly.” He sat on the edge of my bed, looking down. “I guess I'm taking it.”

“I'm sorry, Bernie.”

“No, it's probably for the best. Hey, I was ready to go last year, but after Bert took sick, I felt like the department wanted to be rid of me too. And I don't like being pushed.”

“You've got to get your health back,” I replied.

“The pulmonologist said my lung capacity is forty percent, and there's little I can do about that. The last doctor I spoke to recommended having the foot amputated.”

“I'm sorry.”

“He said that's why it always smells so bad. It's permanently infected.”

“They can do great things with prostheses nowadays.”

“Smell or no smell, I'm keeping my fucking foot!” he shouted.