Beam read it aloud, complete with parentheses.
“Jesus!’ Looper said. “He’s coming after Nell.”
“No question about it,” da Vinci said.
“Telling us ahead of time.” Looper’s tone suggested he could hardly believe this. He touched all his pockets and picked up his pacing. “Some ego this bastard has.”
“Taunting you again,” Helen said. “Trying to rattle you the way you’ve rattled him. It’s to be expected.”
“You mean he might not mean it?” Beam asked.
“He means it,” Helen said.
“What are we gonna do about it?” Looper asked.
“Let him come after me,” Nell said. “Be ready for him.” She sounded angry and confident.
“Don’t doubt he’ll come,” Helen said.
“I don’t,” Nell said. “Unless he’s using me as a diversion. Maybe he’s really going after Beam.”
“Or me,” da Vinci said.
“He wouldn’t lie in the note,” Helen said.
Looper paused in his pacing and looked at her. “Huh?”
“He’s essentially an honest man,” Helen said. “A killer but, in his way, honorable. At least, that’s how he sees himself. That ego you mentioned. The killer’s locked onto Nell.”
“Why me?” Nell asked.
“You’re a woman. He sees you as the weakest link. The place to start. My guess is, if he succeeds with you, he’ll come after Looper. Then Beam. Then Andy-Deputy Chief da Vinci.”
“Working up the chain,” Nell said.
“What about you?” Beam asked Helen.
She rested her chin again on her forearms, which were still folded on the chair’s back. “He doesn’t see me as part of the team. I don’t strategize. I don’t actively pursue him. I’m just a scientist. He has no more against me than he does against a tech in the fingerprint division.”
“Even with all your face time on television?”
“The media have interviewed countless people regarding the Justice Killer. It goes on around the clock. Maybe you don’t watch enough TV to know that, Beam.”
“I hope not, having other things to do. Anyway, none of us has been on camera much since Adelaide came on the scene.”
Da Vinci said, “Try not to mention that name in this office.” He leaned forward, meeting Nell’s gaze. “I think you should be publicly taken off the case, Nell.”
“Seconded,” Looper said.
Beam turned to face Nell directly. “How do you want to play this, Nell?”
She aimed her words at da Vinci. “I don’t want to go anywhere. If I did, it’d only be delaying the inevitable. The killer would go after Loop, then Beam. Why not stop this before it picks up momentum?”
“Remember Knee High,” Looper said. “Cheese in the trap.”
Da Vinci looked away from Nell. “I put Beam in charge of the investigation. It’s his call.”
“You know my wishes,” Nell said to Beam.
“And I know you well enough to figure there’s something more to it.”
“You’re right. There’s something about this cop costume thing that’s eluding me, but I know I’ll grab hold of it. And I don’t like this prick thinking of me as the weakest link in the chain just because I’m a woman.”
“You’re a damned good cop,” Beam said. “One of the best I’ve come across.”
“And one who knows when she’s being set up to get cut out.”
“No,” Beam said. “I think we should do it both ways. We’ll announce you’re off the case, that you’ve been put on indefinite leave and are no longer in New York. But you won’t leave town. You’ll live in your apartment, and leave it occasionally for routine reasons-to buy food, take a walk, maybe even meet someone for lunch. It will all look casual and unplanned. In fact, every step you take will be observed by undercover cops assigned to protect you, and to close in immediately on the Justice Killer when and if he appears.”
“It can work,” Nell said, too fast.
“We might be able to stop him in time,” Looper said. “He’ll have to move in on Nell. He kills at close range.”
Beam thought about Aimes’s singed hair around the ugly entrance wound, the smell of it in the stifling tile vestibule. Close range. “Loop’s right. Other than shooting Dudman in a drive-by, he hasn’t been a distance killer.”
“You really think the asshole will go for this?” da Vinci asked.
“He’ll go for it,” Helen said. “He’ll assume Nell wouldn’t really leave town, and that he’s outsmarting us. Winning the game. He’ll try for her.”
“Will he also know she’s being guarded?”
“Probably,” Helen said. “He’ll enjoy the challenge.”
“If we play it right, and make Nell’s actions seem casual and spontaneous rather than planned out, he might have his doubts,” Beam said. “He might get careless.”
Helen nodded. “There’s a chance. As I’ve been saying, he’s coming undone, and he’ll eventually take too large a risk, make a mistake. Accidentally on purpose. Deep down, but not as deep as before, he wants to be stopped.”
“Why?” Beam asked, knowing the profilers’ stock explanation involving the killer’s inner conflict, but wanting Helen to say it in all its pop psychology glory, for the record. In case this went horribly wrong.
But Helen knew a thing or two about Beam. She smiled thinly, not at all like the other redhead, Adelaide.
She said, “He believes in justice.”
69
“Are you out of your mind?” Terry asked.
They were in Nell’s apartment, where he’d come to see her after learning from the news that she was being taken off the Justice Killer case. He’d seemed glad about it until she told him her plans.
She was near the living room window, using a small green plastic pitcher with a long spout to water a potted fern. Maybe she could bring the damned thing back to life, now that she had more time to nourish it.
“I was so glad you were getting out of that madness,” he said. He’d been working, and he had on jeans and a black golf shirt, brown leather moccasins. She knew he expected to shower and change here, then they’d go out, have dinner, maybe take a walk and have a few drinks someplace, and he’d spend the night.
“You’re talking about the madness I’m trying to stop,” she said. She put down the empty pitcher on the glass-topped table next to the fern. The plant still didn’t look well, the tips of its fronds curled and tinged with brown.
“I’m talking about you risking your life.”
“Everyone does that, every day. It’s just that they don’t always know it.”
“Everyone doesn’t play target for a killer,” he said, pacing silently in the moccasins. “I thought you were really leaving the city, like they said on the news. I came by to see if you wanted to go with me to Cozumel. The airlines have a great special fare.”
“There’s always a special fare to Cozumel.”
“I have a friend there who owns and operates a parasail business.”
“Those things scare the holy hell out of me.”
He stood still and held his palm to his forehead, had to laugh. “And you’re not afraid of this? This thing you’re doing?”
“Sure, I’m afraid. Like anybody who wants to continue breathing.”
“Then why do it?”
“It’s my job, Terry. I thought you understood.”
