Oliver Stark - American Devil

‘Perhaps he was taking things from his victims for months,’ she called out. Harper heard her but didn’t reply. The silence made Denise feel doubly scared. Suddenly she felt really alone.

‘Tom!’ she said quietly, trying to stop her hand shaking. Pretending to be a murder victim was just plain wrong in every way. She felt the fear soak through her. She knew it was irrational, but she felt it just the same. A thin line of perspiration formed on her upper lip. Her skin was tingling, her pulse drumming a fast beat. The room was still cordoned off and sealed. In the early morning, it was an eerie place to be.

‘Bastard,’ she mouthed as she walked through the living room and kicked off her shoes. She then walked into the bedroom. ‘Okay, I’m in the bedroom.’ Still no reply from the guy in the closet, who was taking this way too seriously. It wasn’t nice. Not long ago, in this very room, the American Devil had been waiting in the wardrobe with a seven-inch blade and a plastic bag. He’d killed Elizabeth slowly, slit open her side, taken out her uterus and probably photographed her in all kinds of poses.

Denise shivered. Her eyes were on the wardrobe. On the bed, she saw that Tom had placed a dress. She walked over and looked at it. Then, from behind, she heard the door of the wardrobe creak open. She turned quickly.

For a moment, it was not Tom coming out of the wardrobe but a stranger in the shadows and her heart thumped. ‘Tom,’ she called out. There was no answer. He was staring hard, trying to feel the killer’s movements.

‘Tom, you’re scaring the fuck out of me, you shit!’

‘Shut up. I’m concentrating. The killer approaches the victim. She freezes and he shows her his knife. He tells her not to cry out or he’ll hurt her. She asks him what he wants. She says she can get him anything he wants. He shakes his head. Nothing is knocked over, so I guess she doesn’t run. He walks over. He’s holding the knife. Then he takes hold of her.’

Tom walked over to Denise. He suddenly realized that she wasn’t joking. Her hands were shaking. He pulled up and smiled. ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘I’m okay. But, no, I don’t like it. I don’t like it. Why did he do that to her? In here. God. She was alone and terrified and there was nothing she could do. How can anyone put someone through that?’

Tom moved forward. He put his arms round Denise and she let herself fall against his body. ‘It’s just like you say in your theories,’ he said. ‘He desires them as objects, but doesn’t see them as people. Are you okay?’ Just a second more, she thought, resting her head on his shoulder. It felt safe against his chest, with his arms around her. And then she felt herself resenting her own weakness and pushed him away from her.

‘We’ve got to catch him out, Tom. What can we do?’

Tom put his hands in his pockets. ‘We’ll forget the reconstruction. I’ll go through it on my own. I’m sorry. Let’s look around. How about that?’ Denise stared at him. Something she didn’t understand yet. Was it intimacy Tom didn’t like? Or was he being sensitive?

‘He scopes them for a long time. That’s got to leave some tracks. Look at this place. Open her wardrobe.’

Denise walked to the wardrobe and opened it. Tom stood where the killer had stood and looked out of the window. The city was just waking up.

‘She’s got a lot of clothes,’ Denise called. The walk-in wardrobe was expansive, with racks of outfits and shoes.

‘Yeah,’ Tom confirmed. ‘She was a big shopper.’

Denise came back. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Maybe he likes well-dressed women. Maybe he likes clothes. Maybe all rich women shop a lot.’

Denise looked around. ‘Maybe he finds these women at the upmarket stores.’

Tom looked up. ‘That might go somewhere. If we want to find this killer, we’ve got to find out where he stalks them. What’s the link? We’re guessing he’s after rich blondes. So he finds one. He follows her. He seems intrigued. We found Amy Lloyd-Gardner’s SUV; the new clothes she’d just bought from Madison Avenue were missing.’

‘Take a look at Elizabeth’s shoe collection,’ said Denise.

Tom walked to the wardrobe. It was neat and organized, in colours and styles. The shoes had their own little shelves and there were upwards of a hundred pairs. Tom looked at the shoes. There were spaces on the shelves where two pairs were missing. One, no doubt, was the pair she died in, but the other pair? Had he taken them?

‘Denise, take a look here. Why would she be missing two pairs of shoes? One pair she was wearing, but the others, how does that work?’

Denise stared into the wardrobe for a moment. ‘He fetishizes objects, maybe shoes too. Maybe he took them. They all take little reminders, don’t they?’

‘Yeah, but a second pair of shoes is strange. We ought to go back to the other murders and see if any clothes were missing. We wouldn’t have spotted this if she wasn’t so organized.’

Tom looked again and noticed a bright chiffon scarf hanging with several others. He called Denise over and pulled it off the hanger. It was crimson with a gold design. Very distinctive.

‘What do you make of this, Denise?’

‘Silk scarf. What of it?’

‘Elizabeth Seale had a scarf wrapped round her head. Just like this. I’ll have to check it, but I’d say it was identical. This is a pretty distinctive design.’

‘So what are you saying, Tom?’

‘Elizabeth had this scarf around her head. Exact same design.’

Denise just stared. ‘She had two scarves. She’s a woman, she’s got a hundred pairs of shoes.’

‘How many pairs of shoes the same?’

Denise took a few seconds to look. ‘None.’

‘Expensive scarves. You don’t buy two of them, do you?’

‘Maybe one was a gift.’

‘Maybe,’ said Tom.

Denise clicked. ‘Or maybe, he doesn’t just follow the women. Maybe he’s doing more than just following.’

‘That’s right. We’ve got evidence from every victim now that showed he was either stalking or interacting, but this is different.’

‘Okay,’ said Denise. ‘Let’s say he’s scoping his target, getting closer, but he’s not quite ready to go the next step and talk to her or touch her, so what does he do? He breaks in like he did with Mary-Jane or he starts to buy the same things that they buy. You know, mimicking them and taking the same item home. It could have a kind of totem value to him.’

‘Psychologically, is that possible? That buying the same thing could give him a buzz?’

‘Yeah. I think so. Imagine it, he’s watched her for a few days. He follows her into a store, sees her buy something, then he goes up and buys the same thing. He’s walking right behind her with the same item that she has. It’s a kind of weird way of connecting.’

‘Very weird,’ said Tom.

‘You’re not getting it, are you? Listen, he bought the scarf, Tom. He bought the scarf, brought it to her apartment and strangled her with it.’ She trailed off.

Harper let the idea travel once round his mind, then he nodded. ‘Yes, I get it. I think you’re right. I think he did buy it. That means we’ve got a potential point of contact. We need to find out where she bought this. But why does he do it? What’s he after, Denise?’

‘Intimacy,’ said Denise and held Tom’s stare. They both suddenly got it.

‘We’ve got to hunt the stalker, not the killer,’ said Tom ‘And now we know where he’s been stalking. The killer is very careful. But maybe the stalker isn’t.’

Dr Fox’s Office

November 22, 11.00 a.m.

Nick looked up at the cream ceiling of Dr Fox’s office and closed his eyes. He’d been sitting opposite his psychoanalyst for just under an hour and was feeling no better. He’d spilled his sick nightmares all over Marty’s lap but that just left him feeling confused and angry. He looked across at Marty with wide eyes.