Raney & Levine (10 page)

20


I
’m so smart. No one saw me do the second
one. And God praised me for it, urged me on.

Last night, halfway down East Tenth Street in the valley
of East Village fearing no evil, I had become a different person. Had the sense
not use the revolting subway bathroom to change, they have security cameras
there too. But into an alley I ducked, and from my Macy’s bag I became someone
else.

I am a chameleon. I can carry my different looks with me.

Nikki Sheehan, Nikki Sheehan, your crappy old locks were
so easy to pick. I knew they would be in your decrepit building.

Creaking stairs, but a broken light bulb made them dark.
Every door, I knew, was locked and bolted, with its occupants asleep or stoned.

You were such a deep sleeper, Nikki Sheehan. You didn’t
hear me step into your sad little studio. But I was kind, it was over fast,
wasn’t it, Nikki? For a second you squealed like a pig, but I had my gloved
hand over your mouth, and the rest was over faster than you deserved.

I have become more clever. Had my note for them already
written, to leave on your bloody pillow next to your sinning, destroyed face.
YOU LET SATAN USE YOU TO DESTROY GOD’S WILL. And now you are now burning in
hell! I can SEE you burning, and I rejoice! I close my eyes and see you
shrieking in eternal flames!

My extra special message died, unfortunately, during the
day. I had to smash his head. He was too strong, giving me too much trouble.
But around your neck he went anyway, Nikki. Really a better message that way, I
think. Satan’s vile symbol crushed SO THE WHOLE WORLD’S HEADLINES WILL ANNOUNCE
MY MISSION.

Have they found you yet, Nikki Sheehan? Have the police
put their yellow tape before your old brownstone and have the reporters come running?
And crowds of fornicators, drunks, druggies and homosexuals with their busy
busy phone cameras?

I see them burning too.

Now I am tired. I hope none of them around me now will
notice. I slept just briefly, then was up again, canvassing the hospital just
hours ago.

My last time. No need for more.

I walked right past you twice, Jill Raney, looking
different each time! You were so busy, of course you didn’t see me, didn’t
notice that those two different people were really one. But those were magic
moments, knowing how invisible I can make myself.

Once I was wearing my orderly outfit with the fake
nametag. Nice that you can buy both anywhere.

The second time I was a female hospital volunteer,
wearing one of your ridiculous volunteer smocks.

But I cased your hospital well. Explored your nooks and
crannies, your stairwells, bathrooms and air vents.

That part of my work is done. Finished for my far, far
greater achievement.

Only hours away…booom! The devil’s workshop will burn,
explode in flames…

What joy I feel, that God chose me above all others to be
his warrior. He saw my struggles through my earlier, so-painful life…an
innocent victim of sin. He saw that I prevailed, and became Good, and would be
strong for Him.

My heart rejoices as I hear again God’s words…“My EYES
are on ALL their ways; they are NOT HIDDEN from me, nor is their SIN CONCEALED
from my EYES.” (Jeremiah 16:17)

It gives me strength to pray. My time is near…

David fast-scrubbed out and stood in the hall punching his
cell phone. Got Jill’s voice mail and muttered fretfully to himself.

His phone rang in his hand.

Gregory Pappas.
Homicide
Detective Sergeant Gregory
Pappas, uttering a quick hello and asking if David was free.

“As of five minutes ago. What’s happening?”

“The Walsh patient died. Doctor Raney’s with us. We’ve got
new developments. Can you come up to neurosurgery?”

Seconds later David burst through the fire door onto the
seventh floor. Tricia was waiting in the hall for him. “I just left Jill. She’s
changing.”

“Changing?” David’s eyes darted up the hall to where police
gathered outside Jenna Walsh’s room. He looked back, his expression shocked and
terribly saddened.

“She’s in surgery’s locker room,” Tricia said, looking
thoroughly depressed. “Gonna give the cops her scrubs that may have interesting
fibers on them.” A pause. “She’s crying. Keeps muttering about snakes and
maniacs and no justice in the world.” Tricia gestured. “I’ll be in the lounge.
With the cops. See you there.”

When he rounded the line of lockers, Jill was pulling up new
green scrub pants, looking pale and shaky. He took her in his arms, felt her
heart thudding hard through their chest walls. She melted into him for a
moment, then lifted her chin.

“Brace yourself,” she managed. “There’s been a new murder
and a confirmed threat against the hospital.”

They looked helplessly at each other. Then, jaw clenched,
David helped her pull on her scrub top.

“Fibers?” he asked, reaching for a clear plastic bag on the
bench. It held her blue scrubs of earlier. He carried it as they left the
locker room for the doctors’ lounge.

With her voice shaking, Jill explained about the brown wool
fibers found on Jenna’s ER clothes that he’d collected - and minutes ago, in
the chaos of Jenna dying, managing to stumble against Brian Walsh’s brown wool
jacket. The police were going to see if there was a match.

“Clever girl. What’s the word on the second murder?”

“Don’t know yet, they’re waiting.” She looked at him
helplessly. “David, is this really happening again?”

It was 5:17. The surgery lounge was mostly empty, except for
two residents fiddling with the microwave, plainclothes cops interviewing the
Walshes in one corner, and Keri Blasco talking to Tricia in another. Scheduled,
elective surgery was over, and the old couches usually filled with napping
residents were empty. This floor got its emergencies, but didn’t have the
non-stop traffic that OB did.

Gregory Pappas was interviewing the stiff next-of-kin with
Alex Brand. He saw them in the doorway, got up to meet them, and gestured them
out to the hall. The Walshes were so focused on Brand that they didn’t look
over, which Jill realized was good.

They had already seen her. Now, to see her talking with
cops…bad idea.

Just outside, Pappas took Jill’s scrubs-filled bag with
thanks and shook hands with David. “This is good, very good,” he said,
surveying the bagged scrubs, then switching his gaze to David. “Ditto the
fibers you found on the Walsh clothes.” He looked gratefully at them both,
easing a manila folder he held under his arm. “Think you two could teach the
whole E.R. staff how to preserve evidence?”

The last time Jill had seen Pappas, he had hugged her. She
was upset, having to revisit the awful roof scene where she and David had
nearly died. He was a dark-haired, heavyset man in a dark suit and bright tie –
the kind wives buy. His eyes were tired and kindly and always sharp.

“So, back here again, huh?” He managed a tight smile.

“Yep.” David shook his head. “Got a new nut job among us.
Find any surveillance tape on Jenna’s attack?”

“No. None in the alley, and the stores leading up to it just
tape their interiors. With one exception that was old, too grainy like a black
blizzard. No damn help.”

David pulled up two chairs from the nurses’ station, and
Pappas sat on a hall bench facing them, leaning forward, holding his manila
folder. The hall smelled of food. Dinner trolleys were beginning to roll past.

Quietly, David said, “Jill tells me there’s been another
murder?”

Pappas nodded grimly. “Twenty-five years old, name Nikki
Sheehan, a grad student at NYU. Didn’t show up for a presentation she’d been
rehearsing with a friend, so the friend went to her apartment on East 10th.
Found the body in bed. Her screams alerted neighbors who called 911.”

The white-jacketed residents who’d been fiddling with the microwave
came out, bitching about it. Pappas waited until they were gone.

Then inhaled. “The door had been left open a crack, like an
invitation. The friend said that was the first thing that spooked her. What
really traumatized her” – he hesitated – “was the dead snake wrapped around
Nikki’s neck. A garter snake, its smashed head on the pillow next to Nikki’s
face.”

Pappas watched them both turn sickly pale, then gravely
added, “Her head and belly were savagely beaten. Her unborn child is dead.” He
swallowed, and added quietly, “She was also a surrogate mom. No connection so
far with Jenna Walsh. Nikki’s friend said she’d had OB checkups at Manhattan
General.” He chewed his lip for a second. “A brick was used to beat her head.
It was left bloodied on her bed stand, like a taunt. No prints, the killer must
have used gloves, and so far no other evidence has been found.”

A blunt force had slammed Jill’s heart.
Another
surrogate?
Another young woman terrorized and bludgeoned?
Another snake?
Nausea welled at the thought of this new, unknown young woman’s suffering and
tragedy.

The expression David bore changed quickly from stunned to
barely restrained fury. “How long dead?” he asked, clenched.

“About sixteen hours.”

“So, attacked last night.”

“Around two a.m., roughly. Same creep, same signature,
just
hours after his attack on Jenna Walsh
. He’s excited, moving fast. Loves
lording – pun intended –his self-appointed moral superiority over others.”

David’s face screwed up. “No connection to Jenna…different
doctors and hospitals… How does he
find
these women?”

“What a help if we knew.”

Jill gripped the edges of her chair, hearing again in her
mind,
What a help if we knew.

“His signature’s been snakes since the anatomy lab,” David
said, frowning. “Long shot, but we’re having one of the chapel snakes autopsied
in our Pathology department.”

Pappas nodded approvingly, and then switched expressions and
made an impatient gesture. “Our forensics literally just started with the
snakes, when Jenna Walsh became a homicide. Now it’s two murders and a
signature killer, so it’s a rush. You guys are ahead. Nice going.”

Now he opened his manila folder, and withdrew a sheet of
paper.

“Psycho’s warning to the hospital, left under the snake’s
head on the pillow next to Nikki.” He looked grimly at the sheet for a moment,
then handed it to David who started to read it.

“It’s a copy,” Pappas told him. “We’ve checked the original
for prints and, nada. This creep does nothing without his gloves.”

The paper was a standard computer sheet, 8 ½ inches by 11.
David leaned to Jill, showing her, and read softly the huge letters, “MADISON
MEMORIAL IS THE DEVIL’S WORKSHOP.
IT AND ITS SPAWN
MUST BE DESTROYED
LIKE THESE WHORES.”

“’These whores,’” Jill repeated faintly, her heart thudding.
“He was afraid we wouldn’t link Jenna and Nikki Sheehan?”

“Typical megalomaniac,” Pappas said. “He likes to assume
others are stupid.”

David was scowling down at the paper, his expression
intense. “The devil’s spawn
and
his workshop.” He looked up, troubled.
“The hospital’s a huge place. This isn’t like last summer’s killer who was only
after us and Jesse.”

“Right.” Pappas glumly nodded.
“This is a wider threat.
It suggests a Columbine-type shooting or…” He stopped. His lips tightened.

“A bomb,” David said, very quietly.

Pappas nodded again, and checked a text on his phone. “As of
ten minutes ago we’ve got bomb-sniffing dogs at every entrance. More dogs are
coming. May be patrolling the floors, everywhere.”

Bomb-sniffing dogs…

Jill felt a new wave of fear and nausea. Stared down the
long hall to a window at the end. When had it become dark?

She looked back to Pappas. “Could all this be traced to that
SPAWN OF THE DEVIL sign?”

“We’re on it. It’s also possible the killer saw that
megaphone guy on TV. Copied his language.”

“It could have been Megaphone Man himself,” Jill said
desperately, leaning forward.

“Keri’s investigating him. He’s a patient at a psychiatric
facility in the Village. Allowed to walk around because he’s promised to stay
on his meds.”

David snorted. “That was him on his meds?”

“No. He lied to his nurse and said he’d taken them. They
have no idea where he got the megaphone. The director wouldn’t tell Keri his
name; said if she wanted to talk to the patient she’d have to get a court
order, which no judge will give. Freedom of speech, patient confidentiality and
all that.” Pappas inhaled wearily. “Plus they check their patients at night.”

“How
well
do they check them?” David asked, and Jill
said tightly, “These places with medicated patients usually aren’t big on security,
locks
.
”

She hesitated for a second. “Can I ask Keri more about this?
Like, the name of the psych place for starters?”

Pappas agreed readily. “Yes, help us move faster. The dogs
can safeguard the hospital, but Psycho could be scoping another woman as we
speak. Or...here. Trying to figure how he can get past the dogs. No protection
is perfect.”

They’d heard his unspoken message.
We’re living in a
post-CSI era. Bad guys know how to leave no trace. They wear gloves, condoms,
leave no prints, no evidence. Police work has become harder, every cop knows
how you helped before. Entered apartments, poked around, and lifted prints
where cops couldn’t without warrants. Illegal search? Not if non-cops did it.
Inadmissible in court? Sure. But it helps us narrow the search, save time,
footwork…lives.

Last July, when the cops had the wrong guy, Jill and David
had even found the killer.