When he didn’t take her hand, Elaine tumbled forward.
This was going to be a night of confusion. At least for the cops.
Using his gloved hands, he smeared Elaine’s blood in every room on almost every surface he could find.
Then he began his signature ritual. He took out a vial of blood he had been saving from a previous victim.
There were a dozen or so baseball bobblehead figurines sitting on a shelf next to the kitchen. He separated four of them and dribbled the blood from the vial over their heads. He couldn’t keep from chuckling. What will the cops make of this? Taunting the police was part of the fun. It was a habit he’d developed over time. It made life a little more interesting. The added thrill made the taunts worth the risk.
Ott was always simple and subtle with his messages. Maybe one day someone would figure it out, though he didn’t think it would do them any good. He doubted he’d ever be caught.
Now it was time for his final task. He always left this for last. Ott kneeled next to Elaine’s body, now carefully positioned in the middle of a round throw rug. He pulled out his Gerber folding knife and held it in his right hand. It hadn’t been terribly expensive, but he was impressed with the quality.
He studied her pretty face and admired her full lips. She’d lost so much blood that her complexion had turned sallow.
Her eyes were open, staring up at him. He plunged his blade into the left one.
Chapter 13
In bed that night, after another long day of not-so-promising leads, I again reviewed reports and Mary Catherine tossed and turned. Finally, she sighed and said, “Maybe if I watch TV it will make me sleepy. Do you mind?” Without waiting for my answer, she took the remote.
As soon as I heard the theme music to local news, I wished Mary Catherine had never turned on the TV. The anchor led with a simple line: “With three bloody murders in less than three weeks, the city is on watch.”
Well, it was clear the media had already decided our cases were linked. I tried to tune out the news segment, during which a reporter interviewed people about how they planned to protect themselves. Comments ranged from practical to blasé, and one young woman even seemed enthusiastic about the chance to defend herself: “It’s kind of cool.” And of course one knucklehead lodged the predictable complaint that the cops weren’t doing their jobs. I wondered what he would think if he saw me covered with interview transcripts in my bed.
Mary Catherine rolled over and draped an arm across my chest. “One of those murders is your case, isn’t it? You need to be careful. It won’t be any fun to walk down the aisle if I have to do it alone.”
Mary Catherine always had a quip to make me smile. Thankfully the news eventually moved on to other stories, and I drifted off into a deep, exhausted sleep. When my cell phone rang, I was sleeping so soundly—dreaming about my evening with Mary Catherine—I incorporated the ringtone into my dream. It took Mary Catherine’s knee in the small of my back to wake me up.
She mumbled an apology as I grabbed the phone.
I heard a male voice. “Mike, sorry for the middle-of-the-night call. It’s Dan Jackson down at Manhattan South.”
I mumbled the standard answer: “It’s okay, Dan. I was just getting up.” This is old hat for any cop. Holidays, birthdays, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to respond.
“Sure you were. Anyway, it looks like we have a homicide down here that’s similar to the ones I hear you’ve been looking at. Two roommates found a female victim with a distinctive facial injury. It’s a very messy scene. There’s so much blood, forensics isn’t a hundred percent sure we’re dealing with only one victim. They’ve just started processing the scene, but they’re theorizing that the killer may have taken a second victim away from the scene.”
He gave me a little more info and an address just south of Herald Square. I said, “Be there quick as I can.”
I rolled over in my incredibly warm and comfortable bed, then gave Mary Catherine a quick hug. She murmured something. I kissed her on the cheek and said I’d call her later, to which she responded with more murmuring that sounded like “Be careful.”
I could get dressed in the dark as quickly and quietly as any human alive. But as I hustled out of the apartment a few minutes later, I caught the flicker of the TV from the living room.
I saw Brian on the couch, concentrating on the TV. I stepped through the dining room toward him, but his attention never wavered from the screen. As soon as he noticed me, he shut it off and slipped something under the pillow next to him on the couch. I didn’t have to be a cop to notice that furtive movement. Every parent’s experienced it at one point or another.
“Whatcha doin’?” I asked in a friendly tone.
Brian shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. It’s so quiet around here at night. I’m not used to it anymore.”
“What were you watching?”
“Nothing, really. Just flipping around the channels.”
I decided the crime scene I was headed to wasn’t going anywhere. I sat on the end of the couch.
Brian said, “You heading out to work?”
I nodded.
“I used to think I wanted to be a cop just like you. I guess that won’t ever happen now.” His voice had trailed off. With his prison record, he would never be able to get a police job. Another part of the high price he’d paid for his bad choice of working for a drug dealer.
I could sense his depression. I slid a little closer to him. “You know you can talk to me about anything.”
“Thanks. I know.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing. Nothing other than I ruined my life and now I’m trying to fix it.”
“I’ve got news for you, Brian, that’s all any of us are trying to do, all the time. Some of our mistakes might not be as obvious as yours, but we’re all out here trying to fix things.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me. Don’t think you’re going through anything alone.”
Then my son surprised me: he leaned over and gave me a hug. But for a moment, I felt like I was holding the old Brian. The cheerful kid who cared more about sports than anything else.
I left the apartment feeling remarkably good. At least as good as I could be, considering I was heading to a murder scene on only a few hours’ sleep.
Chapter 14
With no traffic, I was at the address on 30th Street in less than twenty minutes.
Brett Hollis met me at the front of the apartment building wearing a new bandage on his nose, not nearly as big and unwieldy as the previous one.
I couldn’t keep from pointing and saying, “It looks better.”
“I had to change it because I was having dinner with my mother. There was no way I would’ve survived her questioning if she’d seen a huge bloody mass on my face.”
“What did you tell her happened? Not the truth, I bet. You lied to make it sound less serious, didn’t you?”
Hollis shrugged. “I never lie to my mother. I told her I wasn’t paying attention while running. That’s accurate.”
Detective Dan Jackson from Manhattan South poked his head out of the front door. “You guys ready to come up? We’re trying to limit access.”