Oliver Stark - American Devil

‘One,’ he said, loud and firm as the point of the knife pressed into her flesh.

She closed her eyes and wished for an angel.

None arrived.

East Harlem

November 19, 5.58 A.M.

Either someone was putting something in his coffee or Harper woke up feeling better after his first two sessions with Denise. In truth, he had unloaded almost nothing of his feelings about Lisa, but it was enough just to hear Denise put them in some kind of order. He liked her hard edge and her lack of sentimentality. Maybe that was exactly what he needed.

From his drab apartment he looked out on the new day. The morning was grey all the way across the city and a light rain was falling. Harper was up before first light and at 6 a.m. headed out to Central Park with his binoculars. He needed to spend a simple hour in the park. It was the walking that did it: somehow it released his mind and got him thinking. The American Devil was interacting with his victims, and had been for years. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, he started to kill. There was nothing similar on the Federal database. Why did a man start to kill? What was it about Mary-Jane that triggered this terrible spree?

Harper walked along the wet street and ran the thought over and over in his mind. Maybe he hadn’t intended to kill her? The killer was in her room, wasn’t he? Maybe he was there before Mary-Jane. Yeah, he thought, it just might be. He’d have to look at the case information, see if his idea had any weight. He looked up. Even early in the morning, the poor of Harlem seemed to leak out of the pores of the city. Harper stopped in a doorway and looked down on a woman in her fifties, lying on her side underneath a hard sheet of cardboard. She was wearing a pair of old tennis shoes without socks and her legs were swollen and glowing with a bluish tinge. Harper knelt down beside her and put his hand on her forehead. There was still heat under the skin. She wasn’t dead, just right next door. Harper stood up and walked on. Then he stopped and turned back. He walked across and put a couple of twenties into the woman’s hand. It was a cold day: the weather had turned again.

Eddie Kasper was walking up the block and caught sight of Harper leaning over the homeless woman. He shook his head and shouted up the street, ‘Why don’t you leave the poor woman to sleep? If you want a date, Tom, I can sort you out.’

Harper looked up. Kasper being up at 6 a.m. wasn’t a good sign. ‘What’s up?’

Eddie Kasper was shaking his head. ‘Are you looking to be sainted or have you lost your sub-prime mortgage and are sorting out alternative accommodation with the homeless doorway rentals?’

‘I’m just connecting, like my psychoanalyst tells me to.’

‘She does, does she?’

‘This is a type A behaviour, for which I get a reward. Type A is the kind of behaviour I’m supposed to do more of, so I’m doing more of it. And you know what, crazy as Dr Levene is, she’s right. It makes me feel a whole lot happier.’

‘Are you thinking of fucking her, is that it?’

‘Your mind is a sewer, Eddie. There are other motivations in life.’

‘So you’re just being good for goodness’ sake?’

‘Goodness is its own reward,’ said Harper.

‘I fucking hate those kinds of rewards.’

‘Cut to the chase, Eddie. What’s happened? What the hell got you out of bed at dawn?’

Eddie shook his head, ‘Sorry, man, they found another body. A girl in Yorkville.’

Harper felt his stomach clench. ‘Damn this bastard. He’s like a machine.’

The two of them walked in silence from the darkness of the doorway into the flurry of New York City. The rain started to fall harder, causing the few people who were out to rush about, covering their heads with any objects to hand. Harper stared at the ground as he walked alongside Kasper, his chin down in his collar.

Eddie’s car was round the corner, so they walked through the rain getting soaked to the sound of tyres ripping up surface water. Harper noticed the changing colour of the asphalt under the rain and the dawn light — it was almost purple. He thought of the water on the rocks at Ward’s Island. He remembered the wet ground by the corpse in the parking lot. Did this killer like water? The waves must’ve kept coming up over Grace Frazer’s body. One more piece of the illogical that would make some kind of sick sense in the killer’s mind.

Eddie pulled a pastrami and mustard sandwich from his deep jacket pocket, held it tightly in his left paw and started eating hungrily. ‘Anyhow, Harps, I’m sorry to break up the dogooding, but this one looks bad.’

Kasper’s red 1996 Pontiac was parked at an angle, half on the kerb. They both looked at it. ‘What?’ asked Kasper. ‘I was rushing to get you.’

Inside the car, Harper finally spoke. ‘What’s the situation? Fill me in.’

‘A college kid, Jessica Pascal, living in the dorm district. One of the students found her. The door of her apartment was left wide open. She was just lying there in the entrance, just like Mary-Jane.’

‘Dead?’

Eddie looked at Tom. ‘Yeah, it looks like it. We’re homicide, right? That’s when we get the call, when people are dead. Did you just think it was bad luck?’

‘Is it the same killer?’ said Harper.

‘If this is his, he’s on some roll. Three kills in a week.’

‘He’s in heat.’ Harper slipped on the seatbelt. The old leather seats crunched under his weight. ‘Any details?’

‘I ain’t got no more details, Church-boy, so don’t do your questions.’

Eddie pulled the car into gear and slipped into the traffic, causing another car to slam on the brakes and honk.

‘Any indication of the method?’

‘Bloody.’

‘How so?’

‘Don’t know. They said we gonna need to get overtime for the cleaners on this one.’

Harper stared ahead. Speeding headlong towards a bloody crime scene hadn’t figured in his plans. He’d wanted to check out his theory on Mary-Jane. He felt the whole case dragging him in.

Harper closed his eyes and rested his head back on the seat. He had already started to prepare himself for what was waiting for them in Yorkville. He was clearing his mind, trying to create a space for what was to come, a place inside his head where he kept all the bloody images and case materials. A room he could close and lock at the end of the day. A fresh murder room.

Yorkville Crime Scene

November 19, 6.45 a.m.

The car took forty minutes to pass through the snarl-up and continued noisily towards the crime scene with some mid-range R amp;B that Harper couldn’t identify. They arrived at the corner of York Avenue and East 82nd Street. Two uniforms were taping off the entrance to the building and a small crowd of seven or eight civilians were hanging round to watch the action. Two Dodge Chargers had cut off the street with their flickering lights, but there wasn’t an ambulance in sight and the Crime Scene Unit hadn’t yet showed up.

‘It’s just the start of the day,’ said Kasper. ‘Everyone works slow for a couple of hours.’

On the fourth floor, Harper and Kasper entered the hallway and saw the entrance to the apartment. It was one of the better buildings in the area, much more expensive than the usual student could afford. They moved past the officer on the door and signed the log.

‘Watch out,’ he said. ‘It jumps right out at you.’

Tom flicked a smile towards him. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

Together, they turned the corner and looked into the interior of a smart and well-kept apartment.

‘Anyone been in yet?’ Tom called to the officer.

The man appeared at the door. ‘No one yet. We just got here, called it in and taped it off. The cavalry are on their way, Detective.’