Oliver Stark - American Devil

‘The killer knew she wouldn’t be missed. I bet the same is true of Grace.’

‘Damn right,’ said Swanson. ‘She was on her way home and lived alone.’

‘It’s a maybe at the moment, but Mary-Jane was alone for about eight minutes each day as she walked to her apartment. If that was a random opportune strike, it was sure as hell unlucky for Mary-Jane. I think he knew exactly when she’d be vulnerable. I also looked up the police records. Grace Frazer had reported a man outside her apartment on six occasions. Patrol took a look but never found anyone. With Amy, my guess is he’s followed her many a time before and knows where she shops. He also knows her car and where she likes to park — right close to the entrance nearest to Madison Avenue. He found a place where the CCTV wouldn’t spot him, too. I might be wrong, but if he had a uniform it would be too dangerous to wear that disguise over and over again in a place with CCTV just waiting for the type of victim he wants. All three suggest he’s a careful, planned stalker who waits until the time is right. That’s what didn’t make sense. They look like risky kills, but he’s planned these so well they’re actually not.’

The team took it all on board. Harper had got to the heart of the case after a day’s work.

‘Press interest?’ asked Lol Edwards. His skin was pale but he had a red birthmark on his neck that was getting redder by the minute with the excitement or the heat in the room. He looked like his face was going to explode.

‘They don’t know what’s happened exactly and there’s only so many tears they can extract from the paying public, so they’re holding out for now, but when they get the full horror they’ll splash this all over.’

Harper went up to the whiteboard. ‘I got one more thing. It’s not something that’s going to lead anywhere, but if you look at Amy’s body from above…’ Tom drew the outline of a body with wings and a halo. ‘See? The two flaps of skin are positioned like wings and she’s got a halo of blood round her head. She looks like an angel.’

‘Oh, that’s sweet, that is, Harper,’ said Williamson. ‘That’s so fucking poetic. You think she fell from heaven?’ Some of the other guys laughed. ‘You think she got sliced up by the overhead power lines? That’s good. You think someone pushed her out of heaven, or did she jump?’

Harper stood centre stage while the team shook with laughter. Finally he smiled and took out a note from the crime lab. ‘You remember that chalk writing on the wall by Amy’s corpse? We just got it deciphered by the lab.’ He handed it to Nate Williamson. Williamson turned it over and read it out.

‘ Every angel is terrifying.’ Williamson looked up. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

Harper raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. No need to gloat. Ah, hell, how often do you get to gloat? ‘Seems like someone wanted us to think about wings and angels, wouldn’t you say, Nate?’

‘Fuck you. That’s what I would say. We’re a team here, Harper, not a bunch of showoffs.’

‘The line is by a German poet called Rilke. I think he wanted us to see the wings and halo. He’s playing with symbols. He’s trying to say something. I think he’s trying to say he’s a clever bastard. My guess is, he’s not educated beyond high school and he hates that.’

‘So what does the quote mean?’

‘I haven’t got a clue.’

‘Well, find out,’ said Williamson. The team felt the tension and wanted to get back to work. They looked at the photograph of the woman from above and suddenly saw something more than mindless mutilation. Garcia spoke first. ‘You saying, Harps, that he posed her and ripped off her skin so she looked like an angel who’d been destroyed?’

‘Yeah, that’s just what I’m saying.’

‘It’s pretty stuff, Harper, and it’d make a nice little story, but how the hell does this help us find the sick bastard who cut her?’

‘It doesn’t — yet.’

‘Ex-fucking-actly!’ Nate Williamson slapped his hand on the desk as if to call the meeting to a close. ‘We got to try to get something more from the witnesses and this composite drawing. And if that fails, Harper, how about we’ll call up the Catholic Church and see if any angels are missing from heaven?’

Harper didn’t say anything. There was no need. He wasn’t playing Nate’s game — he saw straight through the old man’s bluff and anger. Williamson was afraid of losing his potency again, afraid of being found out for not being quite as good as people imagined he was. Well, thought Harper, who wasn’t?

As the team dispersed, Harper walked up to the photographs of the corpses. Each time, they blossomed to life afresh on the static image that was already in his mind. It was a strange sensation, as if the image was layering in his consciousness and becoming more and more detailed.

On the board were ten close-up shots of each of Amy’s toes. The nails were red, but underneath the polish on each there was a faint outline of some other design. The forensics boys had X-rayed the images. He looked closer. A spider and web on an orange background, a Playboy bunny on purple with a crystal eye, two yellow-eyed daisies, a tropical sunset, a set of hotrod flames.

He looked again at the nail art. ‘Williamson,’ he called. Williamson turned and gave him a long cold stare. ‘Maybe I got something here.’

Nate lumbered across and pinched his nose in a gesture of nonchalance. ‘More spirit guidance?’

Tom tapped the photographs of the girl’s toes. ‘Amy’s toes were painted with different designs. You need to find out which nail bar does these. It might be a point of contact for the killer. Maybe one of the places he scopes his victims.’

Nate Williamson was staring hard at Harper. He flicked a glance at the nail designs. Harper tried again. ‘Your investigation needs a lead. I’m throwing you a bone, Nate. Pick it up, for chrissake.’

The Lair

November 17, 4.34 p.m.

There was no doubting any longer that he was an artist. He could feel it more than anything else. It had become as real as the sky and the moon. He was the artist, the creator, the great artisan. The creative flow had just kept coming, bursting out of him like a fountain from a snapped hydrant. His masterpiece was finally coming together. Twenty-five years in the making. Twenty-five years of slow-burning these images and ideas inside his mind. He had waited and waited and now he was emerging from the close sweaty chrysalis of patience with great wings and enormous power.

He rested his arms either side of the table to steady himself and looked down at the evidence. Amy Lloyd-Gardner’s small dark heart rested in a shallow aluminium tray. It had all happened, every moment. It really had happened. The girl’s heart had been steeping in the formaldehyde solution for nearly sixteen hours. The killer wanted to preserve it just as it was, full of beauty and mystery, but it wasn’t easy. He’d already filled each of its chambers with wax to keep the full rounded shape of the muscle; then he’d injected the tissue itself with a concentrated formaldehyde solution. He was desperate for it to work, but he was still experimenting and couldn’t tell whether the heart would disintegrate or hold its shape.

He’d used small animals to test various ways of preserving specimens and thought he had his technique just about right: injecting the tissue with the right solution of formaldehyde, then steeping the organs in the chemical solution so that it entered every cell and stopped the process of decomposition. It sometimes worked well, but other times it didn’t. He didn’t know why. After all, he wasn’t a scientist, he was an artist.