Chuck Hustmyre - A Killer Like Me

Murphy was a homicide cop. The man he was after was a killer. It was the same reason dogs chased cats. It was the natural order of things.

“Are you heading a task force?” she asked.

Murphy shook his head.

“Why not?”

“The rank is in denial. They say the murders aren’t connected.”

“What makes you think they are?”

“The cause of death has been strangulation. The victims all shared common characteristics. Geographically, there are also certain similarities.”

“Prostitution is a dangerous occupation.”

“It’s the same guy, Kirsten. I know it. And when you hear the facts, you’ll know it. I said I can catch him, but I can’t do it alone. If the story breaks in the paper, the rank will have to respond. They’ll have to give me a task force.”

“Like I said, why me?”

“If you were me, who would you tell?”

She pulled a notebook from her purse and stepped back onto the porch. She took a seat on the swing. “Tell me what you know.”

Murphy told her the story, leaving out only the part about the cable ties. All he said about the cause of death was that the victims had been strangled. Holding back exactly how they had been strangled would help weed out the nutty confessors and copycats. It was something only the cops and the killer knew.

“Why won’t the department acknowledge that a serial killer is murdering prostitutes?” Kirsten said. “What are they afraid of?”

Murphy was sitting next to Kirsten on the swing, though he noticed she was careful to keep some distance between them.

“Serial killers attract attention,” he said. “Feds, the national media, self-proclaimed experts, kooks, bounty hunters, psychics-they all descend on the city. The rank doesn’t want that. Because of all the heat we took after Katrina, there was talk about disbanding the police department and letting the state police and the National Guard take over permanently. Most of that talk has died down, but there are still some state legislators who think that might be the best thing for the city. And that terrifies the rank.”

Kirsten stood and walked across the porch. She leaned against the far railing, her notebook and pen still in her hand. “This city is full of killers. Do they think one more is really going to matter, especially one killing prostitutes? Every second or third year we’re the murder capital of the country. Tourists can’t even walk in the French Quarter anymore without getting robbed.”

“Are you going to write the story?”

Kirsten glanced at her watch. “Of course I’m going to write it. It’s a big story. Scratch that. It’s a huge story.”

“You’ve got to keep my name out of it.”

“Somebody has to go on the record, Murphy. I can’t run a story this controversial with just an anonymous source.”

“The last time I went on the record with you I got fired.”

“How am I going to attribute it?”

“You’re the reporter.”

“The managing editor is going to want to know who my source is before he’ll even consider letting me publish quotes without a name attached to them.”

“I don’t care who wants to know. You can’t tell anyone where you got this information. PIB will come after me again, and this time they’ll make it permanent.”

“They didn’t fire you for talking to the press,” Kirsten said. “They fired you for blowing the lid on something they were trying to keep hidden. What you did took a lot of guts.”

“The rank considered it a betrayal.”

“Why, because you arrested a drug dealer and refused to throw the case?”

“Because I embarrassed the mayor.”

“His brother had a kilo of cocaine in his car. He should have gone to prison, not rehab.”

For all of Kirsten’s big-city-reporter cynicism, she really was naive, Murphy thought. Given enough spins of the wheel, she believed the world was supposed to come out fair, and that right would triumph over wrong, good over evil. It was sweet. Too bad it was wrong.

“PIB doesn’t like getting beat,” Murphy said. “And if you beat them, they come back at you with a vengeance. I’ve seen it happen before.”

“That was three years ago. I think you’re paranoid. If they were going to do something to you, they would have done it by now.”

“Are you going to keep my name out of the story?”

Kirsten looked at Murphy for a long few seconds. Then she nodded.

“Thanks,” he said.

She looked at her watch. “I missed the budget meeting. The city editor’s going to have a fit.”

Murphy stood. “Not when he finds out what’ve you got.”

She flipped through the pages of her notebook. “You really think he’s going to move away from prostitutes and start killing…”

“Normal women?” Murphy said.

“I know that sounds terrible but-”

“We call them true victims, people who don’t do things that are likely to get them killed, regular tax-paying citizens. And yeah, I think that’s what he’s going to do.”

“Didn’t you go to some FBI school on serial killers?”

“It was only a weeklong course.”

“Did they teach you anything there, or did you spend your time trying to get into the pants of some FBI chick?”

When Murphy didn’t respond, Kirsten turned and walked down the steps.

He followed her. His Taurus was parked at the curb behind her Volvo. He stopped beside her car as she slid behind the wheel. “Just keep my name out of it,” he said.

Kirsten turned and looked at him. “I will.”

Friday, July 27, 4:50 PM

Murphy stood at the door holding a last-minute arrangement of flowers he had picked up at a supermarket. He knocked but there was no answer. He opened the door and stepped inside. The stench of stale cigarettes almost knocked him down.

“Mother?” he called out.

The apartment was small, even by single-bedroom, retirement-community standards. A sitting room, a kitchenette, and a bedroom, with a bathroom the size of a telephone booth wedged in the middle. Even so, the place was eating a hole through Murphy’s paycheck.

Overflowing ashtrays occupied nearly every flat surface. A film of nicotine covered everything else. Through the open bathroom door, he saw the vanity in its normal state of disorder, a jumble of medicine bottles, beauty products, and potions, along with another ashtray piled high with cigarette butts.

He found her on the balcony, a space just big enough for a lawn chair and a garden table. Her third-floor view looked down on a pair of tennis courts that Murphy had never seen anyone use. He squeezed onto the balcony, hoping to catch enough fresh air to breathe.

“Where have you been?” his mother said, her voice coming out in that same screech that had grated on his nerves his entire life. Memories from childhood. Every evening his mother standing on the front porch, shrieking for him in her vodka-soaked slur: “Sean Patrick Murphy, get yourself home this instant. It’s supper time.”

A couple of older neighborhood boys teased him about it daily at the bus stop until he worked up the nerve to smash one of them in the head with his seventh-grade science book. He took a beating, but they stopped teasing him.

His mother twisted her head around to look at him. “Did you hear me? I said, where have you been?”

Murphy dropped the flowers on the glass-topped table, next to a half-filled ashtray and a half-empty highball glass. His mother didn’t even acknowledge the flowers. “I’ve been busy, Mother. I’m a homicide detective in the murder capital of the United States.”

“You don’t think your sister’s busy, a single mother with a special-needs child? Still, she manages to call me every day to ask how I’m feeling.”