Raffi Yessayan - 2 in the Hat

He wished he could have spent more time with them at the park. It would have been wonderful to stay the night, but he could never do that. Stay too long and you leave too much of yourself. He had stood on that hill long enough to inhale the cool early autumn evening. To see stars, even with the distant city lights. Study his young lovers. Till he heard the voices of the children. Screeching. Their feet drumming the earth. Like little furies.

At least he had the pictures.

Sleep made his way around the room, stopping to admire each of the photos he had taken. Each told a different fragment of the story of these young lovers. They were a beautiful pair. He was happy for them. They had been given the gift of eternal happiness. He lay down on Momma’s bed, closed his eyes and imagined himself back on the hill with them, breathing in the smell of the woods, sharing in their unbridled love.

Momma would be so proud of him, of all he’d accomplished, of who he had become.

I love you, honey.” Alves was using the phone in the conference room to get the privacy that he couldn’t get at his work cubicle. “Tell Iris and Angel I love them.”

“What time will you be home?” she asked. She didn’t sound angry, more disappointed, frustrated.

“Late. We just came up from the press conference. The plan was to put the public on alert. And to avoid giving specifics. But the reporters went crazy with speculation. Tonight Mooney and I have to go through boxes of evidence, see if there’s a connection to old cases.” Alves looked at the six boxes of reports and photos stacked in the corner.

“The reporters are saying the Prom Night Killer is back.”

Alves had wanted to spare his wife for as long as he could, but the reporters had pounced on the obvious connections. One after another they’d called out the name of the killer linked to six unsolved murders.

“I need you at home. Iris is up in her room. She didn’t eat any dinner. She’s got her brother all nerved up. Angel, she found that young couple right down the street.”

“Marcy, if it helps any, he didn’t murder those kids in our neighborhood. Franklin Park was a secondary crime scene, a dump site.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized how bad they sounded. Not comforting to think of a killer using your local park to stage a murder scene.

“What the hell does that matter.” Her voice was strained with anger. “This maniac was in our neighborhood, where our kids play, where we sleep at night.”

“That’s why I need to be here.” Alves tried to talk calmly, but she had a point. His first job was to protect his family. “The only way I can hope to solve this case is to learn as much as I can from Mooney’s old files. Try not to worry. I asked the captain at E-13 to make extra rounds on our street.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Marcy…” He heard the phone click. Alves placed the receiver down. He could feel the vein in his temple throbbing. She was right. He shouldn’t be here. He should be home with his family, making his wife and kids feel safe enough to sleep.

He picked up a stack of photos-at the top was one of Courtney at the crime scene. Her face wasn’t contorted in terror. He studied the photo, from the gentle wave of her long hair caught back in its braid to the firm line of her chin. He’d seen the look before, on the faces of other victims. A little smile almost, a kind of peace.

Alves was starved. Mooney finally got back from BC, and he brought pizza. Alves cleared a space on the conference table and found some paper plates and napkins in a file drawer.

“No football practice tonight?” Mooney said.

“Cancelled for the rest of the week. One of the other parents is taking over for me when they start up again.”

“How are the kids? How’s Iris?”

“Not playing anymore. Iris won’t go near the field. And Angel has never seen his sister scared before. Let’s eat,” he said. He didn’t want to think about Marcy getting the kids ready for bed. How he wasn’t there to tuck the twins in. He opened the pizza box and took a long, stringy slice. He held the box open while Mooney took one. “Learn anything about Courtney Steadman and Josh Kipping today?”

“Both decent students. Good kids. Saturday night they were pretty drunk. We know that from the autopsy. They were lightweights who got caught up in the tailgating atmosphere. At some point they slipped away.”

“Probably to go fool around,” Alves said.

“They didn’t seem the type. They were pretty caught up in the whole Jesuit education thing. Liked to hang out and talk.” Mooney’s face flushed with anger. “Two goofy kids go out and have a few drinks, and this bastard takes their lives.”

“Did you get a chance to reach out to the parents of the other victims?”

“I did that before I went to BC. I had to let them know what happened and prepare them for the media blitz that is sure to follow. I’ve kept in touch with them over the years. Six families.”

“Eight now,” Alves said.

Mooney paused. “I call them every summer on the anniversaries, just to let them know I haven’t forgotten. I told them that we’re working the cases together, that you’ll look at everything with fresh eyes.”

“Where do you think Josh and Courtney went from the game?” Alves asked.

“Either the reservoir or the park at Cleveland Circle.”

“Not one of their rooms?”

“Their friends said that’s where they liked to go to be alone. But that night there was no being alone anywhere. On top of the rowdy BC diehards, there were busloads of Seminole fans up from Tallahassee.”

“Sounds like you were there,” Alves said.

“I was. Working a detail. That’s what makes it so hard to believe he pulled it off without being seen. He’s getting bolder. And better.”

“Did you ever have any real suspects?”

“We had a few guys with bad records but no evidence connecting them. The first vics, Adams and Flowers, were killed where they were found. The others were staged at secondary crime scenes. Where are the photos from the first scene?”

Alves shuffled through the stack and found the manila envelope with the photos and handed it to Mooney. Alves had spent the last couple hours organizing the boxes and looking through the files. “Reports indicate it was a nice night. Looks like Kelly Adams and Eric Flowers snuck out of their prom at the Sheraton Prudential for a walk that led them to the Fens. Next morning a runner found them dead on the grass between a park bench and some shrubs.”

Mooney flipped through the photos. “My first time working a serial murder. I’d seen plenty of domestics, bar fights turned fatal, even mob hits. But nothing like this. The victims were dressed up in their prom clothes. The only victims wearing the clothes they were killed in. After that, the victims were dressed up by the killer. Flowers’s shirt had a stel-late pattern, a four-pointed star-shaped tear.” Mooney made a rough diamond with his index fingers and thumbs. “There was also tattooing, bruising in the shape of an elongated gun barrel opening.”

“A contact shot like the others.”

“Eric Flowers was shot three times in the chest, one entry wound. He may have struggled a little, but he bled out quickly.”

“Belsky found four slugs with one entry wound and similar tattooing on Kipping. I’ll have Belsky compare the tattooing on all the male autopsy photos. I took the slugs to Stone. They’re a match. That leaves us with the females,” Alves said, holding up a photo of Kelly Adams, lying in the grass next to her prom date.

“She was strangled,” Mooney said, “probably with bare hands, just like the other females. The thing is she had a real tattoo of the Tai-ji. After that, he started stamping the symbol on the other girls with a craft store stamper.” Mooney tossed a balled-up napkin on the table. “This whole Tai-ji thing is bullshit. He’s using that because he saw Kelly’s tattoo and thought it would throw us off. I bet he doesn’t even know what it means. He certainly doesn’t know what it should look like. The last two times he’s stamped it upside down.”