Chuck Hustmyre - A Killer Like Me

Murphy looked at the staircase on the opposite side of the den. He dreaded climbing those stairs. “How old are they?”

“Nine and six. A boy and a girl.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Murphy’s head felt like it was spinning, like he was drunk. When he had walked in the front door, he noticed an unusual somberness among the cops already at the scene. He understood the reason. There was nothing worse than working the murder of a child.

“How did he kill them?”

“He suffocated one and strangled the other,” Gaudet said. He took a deep breath. “Looks like the boy was raped.”

They stood in silence, staring down at the dead woman.

Finally, Murphy said, “I know it’s probably a waste of time, but we’ve got to look at the ex-husband.”

“He already called the office. He’s at a doctor’s conference, in London.”

Murphy walked back into the den. Gaudet followed.

“The letter included a coded message,” Gaudet said.

“What kind of code?”

“A bunch of letters and numbers. Looks like CIA shit to me.”

The case was getting bizarre, Murphy thought. A dead mother, two murdered children, a victim’s finger, his own name in a letter, a fucking code. And more victims to come. He was sure of that.

Murphy turned to his partner. “Why did the captain bring me here?”

“You’re back on the case,” Gaudet said. “Detailed from CE amp;P to Homicide.”

“Detailed, not reassigned?”

“That’s the word the man used.”

“What about PIB?”

Gaudet shrugged.

“Don’t bullshit me, Juan.”

Dropping his voice to a whisper, Gaudet said, “Word is, PIB still has a green light. But if you can put this case down you’ll be a hero. They won’t be able to touch you after that.”

“You ever hear of Melvin Purvis?”

Gaudet shook his head. “Was he on the job?”

“Never mind,” Murphy said. “To hell with PIB and the rank. They may be digging my grave, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got to pick up a shovel and help. They wanted me off the case, I’m off.”

“Hey, partner, this is me asking. I need your help.”

“You got the whole Homicide Division.”

“This is make or break, brother,” Gaudet said. “Right now, I’m the primary. If I don’t catch this guy, I’ll be out on my ass, back in a district.” He patted his stomach. “And I don’t think my uniforms fit anymore.”

Murphy eyed his friend’s belly and laughed. Then he stared across the den into the kitchen. “All right,” he said. “But I’m not doing it for the rank.” He nodded toward the dead woman. “I’m doing it for her and those two kids, and for all the other victims.”

Gaudet smiled. “So how do we catch this sick fuck?”

“Any way we can.”

“Sparks,” city editor Gene Michaels shouted across the frenzied newsroom. Deadline was only a couple hours away. Everyone was pounding their keyboards.

Kirsten glanced up from her computer screen. She was busy working on tomorrow’s front-page story about the serial killer’s letter. She kept typing.

“Sparks, I need you,” Michaels shouted again.

Kirsten pushed herself up from her chair. She looked across the sea of heads at the city editor’s desk. Michaels was on his feet.

“What?” Kirsten said, hoping he picked up on the annoyance in her voice.

“Triple slaying on Freret Street.”

The newsroom din faded.

Kirsten grabbed her phone and waved it at him. Two seconds later, it rang.

Michaels didn’t bother with a greeting. “Since the command desk put out the call a couple of hours ago, there hasn’t been any chatter about it. I think Homicide must be using a secure frequency, something they almost never do.”

“He couldn’t have killed three women at one time?”

“It’s not three women,” Michaels said. “It’s a mother and her two children.”

“How do you know that?”

“A source at EMS just told me.”

“Jesus,” Kirsten said. “Still, that doesn’t sound like the serial killer, and I don’t have time to chase it down. I’m trying to finish my story for tomorrow.”

“You remember that call Detective Gaudet got right before he and Landry bolted out of our meeting?”

“Yeah.”

“As soon as I got back to my desk and flipped on my scanner, the command desk was dispatching detective and crime-lab units to Freret Street.”

Kirsten noticed a slight tremor in the editor’s voice. “I’ll make a call,” she said.

“Thanks.”

Kirsten hung up and dug through her imitation Prada handbag for her cell phone. She had Gaudet’s number saved. She rang his phone but the call went straight to voice mail. She didn’t bother leaving a message. Like Murphy, Gaudet never checked his messages. It was a cop thing.

Kirsten slung her briefcase over her shoulder and walked across the newsroom to Gene Michaels’s desk.

The city editor turned his chair to face her.

She noticed his face was a couple of shades whiter than its customary chalk color. Michaels was in his early sixties. Kirsten knew that he and his wife had lost a son several years ago. It was something he always carried with him. The news of the murder of two children had evidently hit him hard.

“I’ll go, but I need an extension on my deadline,” Kirsten said.

Michaels glanced at the clock radio on his desk. It was 7:05. Deadline was nine o’clock. “How much?”

“Eleven o’clock.”

He shook his head. “Ten is the best I can do.”

Kirsten nodded. “If this thing on Freret is a goose chase…”

“I have a bad feeling,” Michaels said. “I think the killer just stepped up, exactly like Murphy said he would.”

Tuesday, July 31, 7:45 PM

Murphy stood outside the front door of the house on Freret Street using a flashlight to look for signs of forced entry, when he happened to glance down the driveway and see Kirsten pressed against the crime-scene tape, in the middle of a small scrum of reporters.

She was waving at him.

He ignored her.

She stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled like a truck driver at a carload of naked cheerleaders.

Murphy stepped back inside the house. During the next hour, Kirsten called his cell phone six times.

At a quarter to nine, he stepped outside to get some fresh air. She was still there. A photographer stood next to her snapping pictures of Murphy.

Murphy walked down the driveway. He stood across the yellow tape from Kirsten. “You’re harder to get rid of than a dose of the clap,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. “You should know.”

“What do you want?”

As the other reporters pressed in, sensing a fight, Kirsten nodded toward the yard next door, signaling she wanted to get away from her colleagues. “I need to talk to you.”

Murphy shook his head.

She didn’t let his refusal stop her. “Is this case connected to the serial-killer investigation?”

“As far as I know there is no serial-killer investigation.”

“Is it true the victims are a mother and her two young children?”

A talking head from TV was yammering into his cell phone, careful not to mess up his perfectly coiffed hair. He stopped talking when Kirsten mentioned dead children. “I’ll call you back,” he said into his phone. He looked at Murphy. “Is that true, about the kids?”

Murphy stared at the TV pretty boy. “You’re going to have to talk to the department’s public-information officer. I can give you his contact information if you need it.”

The other reporters started firing questions at him.

Murphy walked away.

Later, when he peeked through a front window, Kirsten was gone.