‘What is it?’
‘You like watching birds, don’t you? You ever see a hawk trying to get a lure from his flyer?’
‘Sure.’
‘You see how the hawk will use all kinds of strategies to surprise the flyer so that he’s not seen until the last moment?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s how the mind works. It catches you out, and the anger keeps you from seeing what’s really there.’
‘And what’s really there?’
‘That’s what we’ve got to find out. But we’ve got to do it together.’ Dr Levene let the silence hang in the air. ‘You want to be helped or are you seriously just here because you need to be?’
Harper had been thinking. He looked up at her. ‘You think you can help?’
‘I can try, if you’ll let me.’
‘I never thought I’d say this, but okay, I’ll give it a go.’
‘You’ve surprised me,’ said Dr Levene. ‘Why the change of heart?’
‘I need help.’
‘That’s a serious admission. I’m impressed.’
‘Not for me, Doctor, for chrissake, for the case. You’re good at what you do, I can see that right away. You’ve also done more research on serial killers than I’ve ever heard of and if I need to do one thing it’s to get to understand this killer’s mind. I don’t think I can do it alone.’
‘What are you saying? You’re asking for my help on the case?’ Denise couldn’t disguise the excitement she felt and her voice lifted an octave.
‘Calm down and listen. From the moment this story went to press, this just got a whole lot more difficult. The American Devil is going to be reacting to his own drives and, also, the way the press report it. And on top of that, it gets very messy with the media and politics involved, but if this guy’s going to be caught I need to see things clearly. I think you can help, Doctor — you’ve got good eyes for how people tick.’
‘Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.’
‘So the deal is, I’ll talk about myself and do what I’m told, if you let me talk about this killer’s behaviour and tell me if I’m on the right lines, psychologically speaking.’
Denise nodded slowly. ‘So tell me, how’s the investigation going? You got anything to go on?’
Harper shot her a sidelong glance. ‘This won’t be a nice conversation. There’s a bitch of a killer out there and he’s beginning to feel confident. He took out a woman on a Saturday afternoon. That’s quite some self-belief he’s got. The thing is, he looks uncontrolled and random but he’s left nothing for us to go on at all. He’s actually very well organized and very smart. He seems to know exactly what a cop would look for.’
Denise was taking notes as he spoke. Harper paused and stared at her pen. She looked up. ‘You want help, this is how I do it, on paper.’
‘Okay,’ said Harper. ‘Now the thing for me is that he’s focusing on rich society girls. We got a hell of a lot more groundwork to do to find out why, and time’s running short.’
‘What’s his motive?’
‘Good question.’ Harper looked up from the glass he was twisting in his hand. ‘I think his motive isn’t just to hurt these women. I don’t know. I think he wants to make a hell of a statement about something. He wants attention and he’s going to get it now Erin Nash is feeding the public, but there’s so much groundwork to do. There are hundreds of patients from Manhattan State who need to be assessed and interviewed and there are hundreds of witness statements that we’re not getting through properly. They don’t correlate. The whole thing is swimming in detail and I got to figure out one or two angles.’
‘What about a profile?’
‘Yeah, we’ve tried that. We’ve sent the packages over to the Feds for Mary-Jane and Grace and they came up with a pen portrait based on the first two victims. Then the MO changed — you know, he took someone out by day, he changed his trophy from eyes and hair to heart — and the Feds got nervous and withdrew the profile. They don’t know which way to jump, so they’re just sitting on it, afraid of getting it wrong and getting the blame. Now the press is breathing fire they’ll be even more careful.’
‘I think the profile looks stable to me — three similar victims, three similar attacks. Don’t you think that the change reflects changed circumstances rather than a change of personality?’
Harper looked up from the glass again. ‘Yeah, I think so. Anyhow, you’ve got a head full of good questions there, Dr Levene, but now I got to go. I’ve got to see how this Nash lady got her information.’
‘Okay,’ said Levene. ‘I’ll help with the investigation, but if I’m also going to help you, then the first thing you’ve got to do for me is notice just how many times you get riled. You keep a note of that and I can begin to work.’
‘How the hell do I monitor that?’
Denise took out a small green elastic wrist strap. ‘You wear this on your wrist and whenever you have an angry thought just give it a twang. I just want you to see how often your mind takes a walk down that particular avenue.’ She handed him the band. He took it and looked at it suspiciously.
‘You are fucking kidding me.’
‘Think of it as an investigation into your own psyche. It’s not medicine, it’s a form of information- gathering.’
Harper stood up and pocketed the elastic strap. ‘I’ll see what I can do, Doctor.’
Chapter Eighteen
Blue Team
November 18, 3.48 p.m.
Mark Garcia hurried across to Harper as he walked into the Major Investigation Room and handed him a blue manila folder. ‘Report you wanted, Harper. They just completed the walkabout. It tallies with Amy’s credit card records. Nothing unusual that we could see. But I know you wanted it soon as.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’ Harper took the folder and returned to his desk. There was a little postcard sitting on his keyboard. Harper picked it up. It had a picture of Muhammad Ali in his younger days and a quotation below it.
Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them — a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.
Harper turned over the card. He read the scrawl of black ink. Good to have you back, champ. We know you have the will but we hope the skill will come later. Eddie.
Harper smiled and stuck the postcard on his monitor. ‘Nice to be back, Eddie,’ he said aloud.
He poured himself a coffee and caught up with the latest news coming in from the various arms of the investigation. With three kills, they had hundreds of interviews to get through, as well as a wealth of forensic data to process. Harper looked in at the office set up to deal with tip-offs from the public. A team of five men and women were sitting with headphones speaking into their mics. Harper caught one girl’s eye. ‘How’s it going?’ he mouthed. The girl pointed to the whiteboard by the door. They’d set up a tally for day one. Three columns. Confessions, Leads and Irrelevant. They had 132 irrelevants, 207 confessions and zero leads. Harper nodded. It was always the way. But still, if the cops were honest, a case like this needed a tip-off from a member of the public. Someone somewhere must’ve seen something.
Down the hallway, the press team were putting together information for the public. This would lead to a reconstruction of each murder for TV. The more people knew about each crime the more likely it was the cops would get valuable information. As yet, the public didn’t know enough, so the only people who called were geeks and freaks.
Harper took out the report on Amy Lloyd-Gardner’s last hour on earth. They had traced her through a number of shops, all expensive designer boutiques. They had her purchases down one side. She’d bought two pairs of
