Oliver Stark - American Devil

Denise was taking notes as he spoke. Harper paused and stared at her pen. She looked up. ‘You want help, this is how I do it, on paper.’

‘Okay,’ said Harper. ‘Now the thing for me is that he’s focusing on rich society girls. We got a hell of a lot more groundwork to do to find out why, and time’s running short.’

‘What’s his motive?’

‘Good question.’ Harper looked up from the glass he was twisting in his hand. ‘I think his motive isn’t just to hurt these women. I don’t know. I think he wants to make a hell of a statement about something. He wants attention and he’s going to get it now Erin Nash is feeding the public, but there’s so much groundwork to do. There are hundreds of patients from Manhattan State who need to be assessed and interviewed and there are hundreds of witness statements that we’re not getting through properly. They don’t correlate. The whole thing is swimming in detail and I got to figure out one or two angles.’

‘What about a profile?’

‘Yeah, we’ve tried that. We’ve sent the packages over to the Feds for Mary-Jane and Grace and they came up with a pen portrait based on the first two victims. Then the MO changed — you know, he took someone out by day, he changed his trophy from eyes and hair to heart — and the Feds got nervous and withdrew the profile. They don’t know which way to jump, so they’re just sitting on it, afraid of getting it wrong and getting the blame. Now the press is breathing fire they’ll be even more careful.’

‘I think the profile looks stable to me — three similar victims, three similar attacks. Don’t you think that the change reflects changed circumstances rather than a change of personality?’

Harper looked up from the glass again. ‘Yeah, I think so. Anyhow, you’ve got a head full of good questions there, Dr Levene, but now I got to go. I’ve got to see how this Nash lady got her information.’

‘Okay,’ said Levene. ‘I’ll help with the investigation, but if I’m also going to help you, then the first thing you’ve got to do for me is notice just how many times you get riled. You keep a note of that and I can begin to work.’

‘How the hell do I monitor that?’

Denise took out a small green elastic wrist strap. ‘You wear this on your wrist and whenever you have an angry thought just give it a twang. I just want you to see how often your mind takes a walk down that particular avenue.’ She handed him the band. He took it and looked at it suspiciously.

‘You are fucking kidding me.’

‘Think of it as an investigation into your own psyche. It’s not medicine, it’s a form of information-gathering.’

Harper stood up and pocketed the elastic strap. ‘I’ll see what I can do, Doctor.’

Blue Team

November 18, 3.48 p.m.

Mark Garcia hurried across to Harper as he walked into the Major Investigation Room and handed him a blue manila folder. ‘Report you wanted, Harper. They just completed the walkabout. It tallies with Amy’s credit card records. Nothing unusual that we could see. But I know you wanted it soon as.’

‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’ Harper took the folder and returned to his desk. There was a little postcard sitting on his keyboard. Harper picked it up. It had a picture of Muhammad Ali in his younger days and a quotation below it.

Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them — a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.

Harper turned over the card. He read the scrawl of black ink. Good to have you back, champ. We know you have the will but we hope the skill will come later. Eddie.

Harper smiled and stuck the postcard on his monitor. ‘Nice to be back, Eddie,’ he said aloud.

He poured himself a coffee and caught up with the latest news coming in from the various arms of the investigation. With three kills, they had hundreds of interviews to get through, as well as a wealth of forensic data to process. Harper looked in at the office set up to deal with tip-offs from the public. A team of five men and women were sitting with headphones speaking into their mics. Harper caught one girl’s eye. ‘How’s it going?’ he mouthed. The girl pointed to the whiteboard by the door. They’d set up a tally for day one. Three columns. Confessions, Leads and Irrelevant. They had 132 irrelevants, 207 confessions and zero leads. Harper nodded. It was always the way. But still, if the cops were honest, a case like this needed a tip-off from a member of the public. Someone somewhere must’ve seen something.

Down the hallway, the press team were putting together information for the public. This would lead to a reconstruction of each murder for TV. The more people knew about each crime the more likely it was the cops would get valuable information. As yet, the public didn’t know enough, so the only people who called were geeks and freaks.

Harper took out the report on Amy Lloyd-Gardner’s last hour on earth. They had traced her through a number of shops, all expensive designer boutiques. They had her purchases down one side. She’d bought two pairs of shoes. One from Christian Louboutin, one from Prada. She had bought a handbag and a silver Versace dress. The overall bill came to $3,900. That was a hell of a shopping trip. Harper knew that the killer might keep these items so it was important to get photographs of them for the media. Someone somewhere might see them, even be wearing them. He wrote a note on the file and tried to find anything else of value, but he couldn’t. Everyone had been interviewed but no one had spotted a guy following her. Harper wanted them to go through them all again until they had a sighting. He wrote a second note and closed the file. He took it across to Kasper.

‘I need these two things, Eddie. I need shots of all the items she bought sent through to the press and I want these interviews repeated.’

‘Repeated?’

‘Yeah, repeated.’

‘You want me to square it with Williamson?’

‘Sure, if he’s around. If not, take a couple of guys and start yourself. Last two or three shops would be the best place to start.’

‘Okay, I’m on it.’

‘And thanks for the card, Eddie. It’s good to be back.’

‘How’s the shrink?’

‘She’s not as bad as I thought.’

‘High praise.’

‘You get anywhere on Erin Nash?’

‘You bet… I got her home address for you.’ Eddie handed him a scrap of paper. Harper read it and nodded.

‘Thanks, Eddie. That’s quick work.’

Harper arrived at Erin Nash’s apartment block still feeling wired. He hadn’t asked anyone’s permission to go talk to this upstart reporter, simply because he knew he’d be refused. Up at the top of the tree, they were doing political deals and giving Nash a midnight call wouldn’t smooth proceedings. But Harper wasn’t interested in the next mayoral elections. He wanted to meet the bright spark who’d fucked up the investigation for her own personal gain. Harper got out of his car and walked to her brownstone down near Greenwich Village feeling a mixture of emotions — or two separate feelings, rather: hungry and pissed off. He’d not had a bite to eat all day, and it wasn’t improving his mood. It was not a great combination but he wanted to know her source: a source who somehow knew too much and might be the key to unlock the case.

Harper went to the door and buzzed her apartment.

A bright, crisp voice replied. ‘How ya doing? Come on up!’ The door buzzed open.

Tom took a half-second to consider his actions. He went for dishonesty and the next moment was inside the building. This was further than he imagined he would get. But luck or something similar seemed to be on his side.