radioed all across Manhattan and New York State. Finding the big shiny car was just a matter of time.
Harper walked through to Williamson to give him the heads-up on the ID. Williamson took the printout. ‘Thanks, Harper. Listen, I’ll take Garcia and go and see Mr Lloyd-Gardner myself. Shit, what a night call this is going to be.’
Harper was pleased that Williamson would take this one. He needed more time to go through the information from the crime scene. When he returned to his desk, his email blinked with a new arrival, from the guys at the crime scene lab. Harper had requested the photographs as soon as they’d been downloaded and categorized. He clicked through the images one by one. The story retold itself on his computer screen. A sad end to life in a grey concrete garage. The violence of the poor woman’s end was there before him in cold close-up. He felt the anger rising and took a moment to detach himself.
He clicked backwards and forwards through the pictures of the corpse. From a certain angle, the naked body with the skin stretched out either side of her torso looked like some kind of butterfly. Was that accident or design? He stared at the screen. Amy’s toenails were painted red, and there was a little black ace of spades on her left hip. Her eyebrows had been plucked thin and then drawn in pale eyebrow pencil, and her lips still retained a translucent pink lip gloss. Even on a mutilated corpse, the little marks of recognition and individuality demanded to be known. Harper noticed a mark just below her lips. Smudged lipstick. Maybe the killer had left a print. He zoomed close to her lips, until they covered the entire screen. It wasn’t a fingerprint. A faint outline of a kiss lay half across her lips in her own lipstick. The killer must have kissed her, coated his lips in her lipstick and then kissed her again. There was a half-print of the killer’s lips sitting right there.
He gave Latent Prints a call and suggested they get a print. Everything needed to be processed, every tiny detail. He never knew, down the line, what would help him nail this bastard and get him locked up. Sometimes it was a single hair, sometimes a significant coincidence, sometimes a cell phone call that put the killer at the scene, sometimes something as simple as a kiss.
What were they dealing with? A sociopath? A thrill seeker or a sexually sadistic serial killer who wouldn’t stop until someone stopped him? The team didn’t talk much as they wandered in and out of the precinct late into the night. Not even the jokes were flowing yet, just the grim sense of a difficult journey and the knowledge of how much pain and suffering these victims had been through.
Harper picked up the congealed dinner of chicken noodles that had been half eaten a few hours earlier. He was halfway through the first mouthful when he caught the image again in his mind’s eye.
Harper moved back to his desktop and clicked on her photographs again. The hands in prayer, he was thinking. That little detail from Grace Frazer’s murder was sitting right there in Harper’s mind and the link to the parking lot killing flashed into his mind. He found the image he wanted. The woman’s corpse was shining bright. Her skin was so pale it was almost iridescent, the wings were blood-dark, and the fluorescent lights glistened gold on the bloody circle around her head.
Harper stopped mid-chew. A halo?
Yes, he knew that there was something in that image, something that connected it to Grace Frazer. The killer had started to express himself, let himself be known a little. First a woman with her hands in prayer and now he’d made wings and a halo. Amy looked like an angel with her heart torn out.
Harper was fired by the thought and quickly printed three photographs, one of Mary-Jane Samuelson, one of Grace Frazer and one of the Angel. He went up to one of the big boards that had been set up in the investigation room and pinned the pictures side by side. Garcia looked across from the computer he was working at. ‘What you looking at, Harper?’
‘He’s signing his corpses.’
Harper picked up his coat and walked down the stairs. He needed some fresh air and a chance to think. A killer’s MO was one thing — it was what he needed to do to kill — but an MO could change, as it had in this case. He had cut them to different degrees, but the signature was what he needed to do to fulfil himself, what he couldn’t kill without doing. The angelic wings and the hands in prayer were part of a ritual, just like the cherry blossom, which struck Harper as almost bridal. The killer needed to pose his corpses like dead angels. Harper felt that he knew something about the killer now. He hated goodness and religion. Like a devil, he needed to degrade it all.
Harper stepped across the street towards a coffee shop. It was close to midnight. Outside, the air was good and cool. The winter migrants who had stayed in New York would appreciate the break from the harsh cold wind. Harper’s footsteps echoed in the quiet night air. Then he spotted a guy up ahead staring at him.
Harper turned and behind him saw two more big guys walking towards him. All three were over six foot and burly. They looked like security guards, or maybe even police.
‘I guess this isn’t social, so what do you want?’ Harper said, cold-eyed.
‘Into the alley,’ said one of the guys. His face looked like the side of a mountain.
‘Read the shield, gentlemen,’ said Harper, flashing his ID. ‘I’m a cop, so you might want to avoid trouble and get yourselves home to bed.’
They didn’t move, but looked down into the dark alley. Harper thought they were motioning for him to make a move, but from the alley he heard footsteps. His eyes twisted towards the sound and he saw the problem. Its name was Lieutenant Jarvis, and everything suddenly clicked into place.
Jarvis’s jaw was no longer wired up but his face was still misshapen down one side. ‘Detective Harper,’ he said in a slow slur. ‘I thought your police time was over. Now someone tells me I’ve got to eat humble pie while you get the glory spot. After you leaping on me with those fists of yours, doesn’t sound fair, does it?’
‘No, Lieutenant, it doesn’t sound fair.’
‘So, what was it you objected to, Harper? You didn’t like my insinuations?’
‘I didn’t like any part of it at all,’ said Harper, ‘or your tone of voice.’
‘Really. My tone of voice. Hey, guys, he doesn’t like my beautiful voice.’
They laughed like eager sycophants. Harper looked around quickly. This wasn’t good news. These four guys were all strong, and people fighting together tended to get all excited like a pack of hounds and do real damage. They could bust him up pretty bad. He couldn’t see a way out. There were too many of them. He let his arms hang down by his sides.
‘These your men, Lieutenant?’
‘These guys are just visiting the city. They stopped by and offered me a helping hand.’
‘Let it go, Jarvis. I hit you because you called my wife a whore.’
‘I still say she’s a whore. She’s shacked up with a lawyer over in New Jersey. She made that move real quick. Makes you think, doesn’t it, Harper? I heard the reason she left is because you used those fists of yours once too often. Well, me and my boys are going to make it hard for you to ever use those fists again. In the name of public safety and women’s liberation.’
Harper bristled. But it was just what Jarvis wanted. The bad cop throwing a punch.
‘Didn’t you hear me, Harper? Lisa Vincenti was fucking every guy in the department while you were out all night chasing Eric Romario. She got real lonely. Liked it every which way, I heard. Now she’s done with the department and has moved on to the courts.’
Harper’s two hands were fists now, and the anger was rising. He took a step forward. Then stopped. ‘I ain’t gonna rise to it.’
‘You don’t need to,’ Jarvis spat.
One of the three gorillas stepped forward, then another. They grabbed Harper at each elbow and shoulder and marched him down the alleyway. The third gorilla opened a long canvas bag that was sitting by the dumpster and took out a serious-looking sledgehammer. Harper was held fast as Jarvis moved in.
‘You know what this is, Harper?’
‘I know what it is and I know what you are — a fucking coward. You do this, Jarvis, and I’ll hunt you down.’
‘With what? You going to slap me with your big flat hands?’
‘I’ll hunt you down, Jarvis, and every one of these monkeys.’
‘You do that. I just want you to remember the last person you hit with those fists and what a stupid thing that was.’
‘Jarvis, this is way beyond necessary. I’m working the case because they need me. There’s a killer out there.’
‘Put his arm on the dumpster,’ called Jarvis.
