The Anniversary Man (34 page)

She smiled, reached out her hand and touched the side of his face. ′Don′t get up,′ she said. ′This isn′t the right time for what we′re thinking about.′

′But—′

She shook her head. ′Deal with this. When you′re done dealing with it call me. We could start over perhaps.′

′Karen,′ Irving started. ′I didn′t mean to—′

′It′s okay,′ she said quietly. She leaned down and kissed Irving′s cheek. ′You have my number, and when you don′t want something from me you should call me, okay?′

Irving just looked back at her without speaking.

′Just nod, Ray. Just nod so I know you heard me.′

Irving nodded.

Karen Langley smiled, almost as if this was what she expected, as if she had long since prepared herself for this kind of thing and knew exactly how to act, and then she turned her back on him and walked to the door.

Ray Irving half-rose from his seat; the front of his jacket caught the handle of his coffee cup, and over it went. In the confusion of snatching napkins from the chrome dispenser he didn′t see her go, and when he looked up she was gone.

Perhaps she′d looked back, a glance, a half-smile - something to reaffirm her position. He didn′t know, and now he would never know.

He sat down again. The waitress came and asked if he wanted fresh coffee. He said no, and then changed his mind.

He stayed for a while - twenty minutes, half an hour perhaps. He watched the world through the window - Seventh Avenue on a Sunday afternoon - and believed, with certainty, that this had been the worst second date of his life.

C
lose to three, and there was little point in returning home. Irving went to his office, made some phone calls, tried to find whatever additional information he could about John Costello. The man had no criminal record, had never been arrested let alone charged, and thus his prints were not on the system. He finally located Costello′s Social Security number, which gave him an address - an apartment in a building at West 39th and Ninth where Costello had been registered in January of 1989. If it was still valid - and Irving had no reason to consider otherwise - then Costello had lived in the same place for almost eighteen years. Irving could walk there right now. Fifteen, twenty minutes, and he′d be standing outside John Costello′s front door, could get inside, take a good look at the world that John Costello had created for himself. How these people lived was always the very best indicator of their state of mind.

Irving stopped right there. These people? What was he thinking? What did he mean by these people? Was he now classifying Costello as somehow similar to the man he was looking for?

Irving quietly derailed that train of thought and focused on the computer.

The original records from the Hammer of God killings had been scanned and forwarded to him from Jersey. They′d been archived in late 2002. Irving knew of the project - a vast undertaking designed to give some sense of order and permanence to the enormous weight of files that existed in county archives; an effort to reduce storage space, to preserve the integrity of documents, to make cross-referencing by hand and eye a thing of the past. Of course, as with all such projects, either funding had finally run out or been withdrawn, or someone had taken advantage of the opportunity and overcharged the taxpayer by using expensive consultants and data-input staff. Eventually someone would exhume the project, pick it up from where it was left off, and second, third, and even fourth attempts would be made to complete it. Irving was fortunate in that New Jersey had made it to early ′86. The last of the Hammer of God attacks - that on John Costello and Nadia McGowan - had taken place in November of ′84. Irving pulled the lot and hard-copied it. Treeware, he thought, and smiled, remembering the term computer geeks used for paper documentation. In the basement of the Fourth he accessed the newspaper microfiche system, pulled the original December ′84 Jersey City Tribune articles: Wednesday, 5th - City Arrest In Hammer Killings Case; Friday, 7th - Hammer Killings Suspect Named and Charged; Wednesday, 12th - Hammer Killer Arraigned; an article from Thursday the 20th about Robert Clare′s boss attempting to take legal action against serial-murder groupies coming around to Clare′s place of work to gloat and collect mementoes. Finally, on December 27th, a report covering the bare facts of Clare′s suicide. Continuing his search for any related Hammer of God articles, Irving found one that struck all too close to home. It was perhaps the saddest thing of all. It was dated Friday, January 4th, 1985, and the header ran ′Hammer of God′ Cop Death.

The article went on to say that Detective Frank Gorman, head of the Jersey City Homicide Task Force, had died of a heart attack in a restaurant bathroom. Gorman was a fifty-one year-old bachelor who, to compound the sense of tragedy, had been dining alone when he died. A twenty-eight-year veteran, he warranted only a two and a half inch squib in the Tribune.

Irving sat back in his chair, lost in reflection. He wondered how many people had attended Gorman′s funeral on Wednesday, 9th January, 1985 at the First Communion Church of God . . . how many people that weren′t cops.

Those simple paragraphs said it all. History was repeating itself. Gorman had been no different from himself. No family, no, kids, no legacy. No flowers required. They would only fade and be thrown away.

He closed down the microfiche and went back to the incident room. He pored over the interviews that Gorman and Hennessy had conducted, found a note scrawled along the corner of the initial McGowan/ Costello incident report. It was in Hennessy′s handwriting, that much Irving could tell, and said, simply, Copycat??

Evidently, Frank Gorman and Warren Hennessy had considered some of the same questions as Irving. Costello had been the only one to survive. Had his own injuries been self-inflicted? Had he killed the earlier couples and then, to divert attention from himself, killed his own girlfriend and injured himself? If that was the case, then who was Robert Melvin Clare, and why would he have confessed? Compared to the current level of forensic and crime scene analysis, much of the technology had been in its infancy in 1984. Perhaps there was a simpler explanation - perhaps there were two such killers. Was there any possibility in the world that John Costello, a mere sixteen years old at the time, could have replicated a Hammer of God serial killing back then?

Irving shuddered at the thought. He was taking huge leaps of assumption. He had met John Costello a number of times now. Was it really possible that he could be the Anniversary Man? Had John Wayne Gacy or Kenneth McDuff, Arthur Shawcross or Harvey Carignan seemed to be who they really were? Or was the most powerful deception the most fundamental in such cases? I am not who you think I am. I am not even who I believe myself to be.

Irving searched for Detective Gorman′s colleague Warren Hennessy in the internal database. Followed him as far as July of 1994. Twelve years had passed. Would Hennessy still be alive? Where the hell would he be? Was there any real point in spending the time and the resources necessary to track him down? What, if anything, would Hennessy be able to tell him about John Costello? That he too had considered the possibility that Costello replicated the Hammer of God killer′s signature? That he had briefly suspected Costello of being the worst deceiver of all?

Irving let go of it. He didn′t believe it. He was filling empty spaces with whatever he could find, and what he was using just didn′t fit.

John Costello was a surviving victim. That was all. He was a man with an extraordinary ability to connect the dots, and that ability could prove useful in making some sense of what had happened. There was nothing more to it than that. The man was an enigma - granted - but Irving wanted so much to believe that he was not a serial killer.

By five p.m., fatigued from reading endless pages of close-typed documentation, he spent an hour rearranging files and photographs, putting things in chronological sequence. He underlined certain points on certain pages from original incident reports. He made notes of things he did not wish to forget when Costello came.

Before he left he called the coroner′s office, asked for the autopsy report on Laura Cassidy. Hal Gerrard was not there, but one of his assistants said that Irving could drive over and pick it up.

Irving did so, went on home from there. A little after seven he sat in the kitchen of his apartment and read through the brief notes regarding the death of a twenty-four-year-old record store employee that New York had already forgotten. Laura Margaret Cassidy, murdered in the same fashion as Alexandra Clery, unconfirmed Zodiac victim.

Once again, it was all assumption. The connection was tenuous at best. What was it that could prove this spate of killings had been carried out by the same man? Nothing but the dates, that was all. Nothing but the fact that these people had been killed in certain ways on certain dates.

Was that enough?

Irving tossed the pages aside and leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes, felt the onset of a headache somewhere back of his forehead.

It would have to be enough - that was the truth - because it was all they had.

′D
o I get a badge?′ Costello asked. His expression was deadpan, no D trace of humor.

′A what?′

′A badge. Like I′ve been deputized or something, you know?′

Irving frowned. ′You can′t be serious.′

Costello shrugged. He rose from the desk in Irving′s makeshift incident room and walked to the window, where he stood for a moment counting cars - white cars. It was twenty past ten, morning of Monday, September 18th. Karen Langley had spoken with Leland Winter, Winter had spoken with Bryan Benedict. Benedict and Captain Farraday had spent no more than fifteen minutes on the telephone, and Costello had been dispatched from the New York City Herald offices on West 31st and Ninth to the Fourth Precinct station house on 57th and Sixth. There were no concessions. There were no exclusives agreed if the case should break. There were no special favors granted. The City Herald was lending the NYPD a crime researcher, a man with twenty years′ experience in the subject, a man who could perhaps think outside the orthodox framework within which these matters usually resided. John Costello - it was considered - would not think like a homicide detective. Somehow he would think differently, and this change of perspective, this shift of viewpoint, was what Irving believed they needed.

Costello turned from the window, hands in his pockets. ′Simply stated we have nine murder victims,′ he said. ′Earliest one was June third, latest one, Laura Cassidy, we think was September fourth, even though she was discovered on Saturday eleventh.′ Costello smiled at Irving. ′I wonder how he felt when she was left undiscovered.′

′I thought the same thing,′ Irving said. ′Why send us the Shawcross letter to make sure we got the Anne Marie Steffen connection, why paint the Wolfe kid′s face, and then leave his Zodiac girl like that?′

′He must have been crawling out of his skin with frustration.′

′It could simply be a matter of limiting the clues. He wants us to get enough, but not too much.′

′Mystique,′ Costello said.

′Mystique?′ ′That′s what it′s all about really, isn′t it? FBI profiler called John Douglas said that the motivation for all of these people is simply the effort to define and perpetuate their own mythology. They all want to be someone but they′re not, so they have to make themselves someone in order to be heard.′

′The abused and neglected child cliché,′ Irving said.

′Clichés are only clichés because they possess enough truth to be repeated.′

Irving walked to the boards at the end of the room. Within a moment Costello was beside him, each of them scanning the faces of the victims, their respective names, the dates and times of death, the pins and flags indicating crime scene locations on the city map.

′It doesn′t have to make sense, does it?′ Irving asked.

′Make sense?′ Costello echoed. ′No, it doesn′t actually have to make any sense at all.′

′Except to him.′

′To him it makes perfect sense, otherwise there would be no reason to do it.′

′Makes you realize how utterly fucking crazy some people are.′

′The feeling is mutual,′ Costello said. ′This man feels the same way about us as we do about him.′

′You honestly believe that?′

′Yes, I do.′

Neither spoke for a while, and then Costello turned and walked back to the desk. ′Crime scene photographs,′ he said. ′I think we should look at every picture that was taken, and if we can′t find what we′re looking for then we should go to the crime scenes themselves.′

′Look for the signature,′ Irving said. ′I can get the pictures. Access to crime scenes I′m not so sure.′

′I appreciate the necessity for confidentiality, but if there are parameters—′

′Let′s take a look at the pictures,′ Irving said. ′If we need to go to the crime scenes we′ll worry about that as and when.′

They started work, emptying the respective files of all pictures. In all there proved to be over two hundred images.

Costello and Irving moved the desks back against the wall facing the window. They laid the pictures out on the floor, side-by-side, case by case, until there was not an inch of carpet remaining visible.

Costello stood on the desk, hands on his hips, and surveyed the jigsaw of images beneath him. Irving stood by the window.

′Come up here,′ Costello said. ′It will give you a different perspective.′

′Give me a different perspective? You are so—′

′Seriously,′ Costello interjected. ′Come and take a look at this.′

Irving tip-toed his way between the lines of pictures and reached the other side of the room. He climbed up on the desk and stood beside Costello, the pair of them looking down at the myriad color photographs.