What was he doing, this maniac killer? The posing was important. Harper knew that much. It was an act of communication. He was saying something. As yet, Harper didn’t speak the killer’s language. But something was happening. This was the second kill in two days. His rate was escalating dramatically. Why? Was it some kind of kill frenzy? Time would tell.
‘Hey, Harper!’ a voice at the far end of the parking lot called out. Harper looked up and saw the tall, thin figure of Eddie Kasper, dressed in his low-slung pants and bubble jacket, his hair braided tight to his scalp.
‘Yeah, what?’
‘It’s just like old times, ain’t it?’
Chapter Nine
The Station House
November 16, 9.14 p.m.
Harper had a quick decision to make if he was going to make a difference to the case. He drove straight from the parking lot back to the precinct, the mass of information from the crime scene turning in his mind. He needed to know the deal.
Captain Lafayette was not in his office. He was down in the gym, sweating out his frustrations. He’d been working round the clock on the case, trying to get the breakthrough from Blue Team while keeping the executives from breathing down everyone’s necks, but nothing was biting.
He’d left a message for Harper to go down to the gym if he turned up. Tom Harper was the one hope he had of turning down the heat, and talking to Kasper had been his last-ditch effort to pull him into the case.
When Harper arrived in the gym Lafayette was alone. Everyone else was out hunting down witnesses and following up vague possibilities. Lafayette was on the weights. He saw Tom and huffed through another five repetitions. Always one to make people wait.
‘Heard you showed up at the crime scene. I was first down there. Worst I’ve come up against. How about you?’
‘Yeah, it’s brutal.’
‘Serial homicides usually escalate like this, Harper?’
‘No. Not quite so quickly, but there are no fixed patterns. They usually take a longer cooling off period between kills. For some reason, the killer got hungry real quick this time.’
‘Same guy, right?’
‘Almost certainly. As long as you keep the specific injuries and the cherry blossom detail out of the press, we should avoid copycats.’
‘What’s wrong with plain old-fashioned murder? You want to kill someone, take a gun. One shot. Be tidy, you know.’ The chief towelled his shoulders dry. His thick moustache was also dripping. He licked the sweat off the bristles and then towelled his face. ‘Offer still stands, Harper. Where are you now?’
‘You’ll have to be more specific.’
‘Look, I can be specific. Do you want to try to save any part of your career by taking the clean slate and helping us nail this case? You’d have to apologize and sign up to some therapy for the aggression, just to keep ourselves in the clear. Rainer is gunning for you, Harper. You need to know that I had to go over his head for this one.’
‘Thanks, Captain. I appreciate your faith in me.’
‘Fuck faith, Harper. I looked up the stats. You’re a closer. The best we got.’
Harper looked around him. ‘I’m not sorry for what I did to Lieutenant Jarvis. He called Lisa a slut, and everyone knows I’ve got a short fuse. He knew what he was doing.’
‘I know, I know. Divorce is a pig of a business. He said the wrong thing. Listen, one day he’ll realize what an ass he is, but until then you’ve still got a life to lead. Look, I can probably apologize on your behalf, but will you help us stop this scum from terrifying half of New York?’
‘What do they want from me? They’re not going to rip up the charges, are they? And Jarvis won’t like it, either. He’ll take it as far as he can.’
‘Jarvis will hate it, but let me worry about him,’ the captain said. ‘He’s got his own troubles. A lot came to light during the internal investigation — he’s been intimidating the new recruits and anyone else not able to stand up to him. He’ll be lucky to keep his own fucking job. And as for the charges, we can maybe get away with a Letter of Instruction. With psychological assessment and therapy for that temper of yours, I think we can get that signed off by the deputy commissioner.’
Harper rose. ‘I can do without the psychological assessment. ’
‘Just go through the motions for me, will you? It’s part of the deal.’
‘I got my own way of handling it.’
‘I know, and look how successful it is. Come on, give yourself a break. Jump on board. You could do with the focus.’
Harper stood silently, then nodded once and the two men shook. ‘Good to have you back on the team, Detective Harper. You get signed up to the department shrink and you’re back on Blue Team. Dr Levene works at headquarters. She knows you’re coming. Just don’t take a pop if things get tough. Keep your fucking hands in your pockets, Sugar Ray.’
‘Sure,’ said Harper. ‘If people lay off me, I’ll lay off them. Simple laws of physics, Chief.’
Chapter Ten
Blue Team Major Investigation Room
November 16, 11.15 p.m.
For the first twenty-four hours of each homicide, the focus was on three main points of investigation — victim identification, witness search and forensic leads. Back at Blue Team, Tom Harper went straight from the gym to his old desk and started working on victim ID. He’d not been happy with the speed of ID on the previous victims. It took them eight hours to ID the Ward’s Island corpse as Grace Frazer and those eight hours were lost hours.
Harper insisted on going through the CCTV images himself. He knew two things for certain from his visit to the crime scene: one, the woman in the parking lot drove there in a car, and, two, that car had disappeared. Simple conclusion was that the killer didn’t use his own car. He’d gone to the lot on foot and after the murder he’d driven the victim’s car out of there. It was the only way he could’ve left in such a bloody state without being seen.
It only took an hour of searching the tape before he spotted the victim’s car arriving in the lot. He paused on a single frame and wrote down the licence plate on a brand new silver Mercedes SUV. He called it through and within a few minutes he was looking at the victim’s ID. She was called Amy Lloyd-Gardner, and she was twenty- four years old. A quick check on the various databases showed she was a PR executive married to a wealthy young banker.
Tom pulled up a photograph of Amy Lloyd-Gardner from a social networking website and leaned back into his seat. He stared at her face. She was another beauty with long blond hair, similar in looks to Mary-Jane and Grace. The killer was fixated on a certain kind of look and this was his trigger: a bright-eyed, blond-haired innocence.
Harper turned round to look at the room full of officers working methodically through the case details. Somewhere out in the city, Amy’s husband was waiting up for her, as yet unaware that his young wife was a murder victim.
She had been on a lazy afternoon shopping trip. She would’ve had no idea as she wandered around the shops that there was a killer tracking her and waiting for an opportunity. No idea at all. Her car, her clothes, her shopping had all disappeared. That meant that the killer had taken everything away in the silver Merc. But the killer didn’t take the body and he didn’t need to take the clothes. He wants to keep the clothes, Harper thought, and added it to a growing list of the killer’s predilections. He called across to one of the detectives and asked him to get the car details sent out to the team and called through to patrol. Within minutes, the car’s plate and description was
