‘Meadow Trail High School. There’s no one here. I’m waiting for the caretaker to come and let me in. I want to check back through the yearbooks. If we can get an ID on this guy, maybe we can trace him back to New York.’
‘That’s the plan,’ said Harper. ‘Keep me up to date.’
‘Will do,’ said Kasper and signed off.
Harper went across town to Maurice Macy’s schoolhouse. The forensics guys had finished their search and the lab guys would be busy. He looked into the rooms, walked through. On the floor there was an old photograph, creased and torn. Harper picked it up. Two boys. One big and tall and one small and slight, standing in front of a sign of some kind. Maurice Macy before he turned into a killer. Harper looked close at the picture of the boys. He looked at the sign, but it was obscured. Just the letter A was visible. Harper put the photograph down and turned round. He saw the empty wardrobe: hardly any clothes at all. Then something clicked in his head. There was no suitcase in the apartment. There had been no suitcase in Marconi’s van. Harper pulled out his cell and called Blue Team.
‘Garcia, get me the evidence list from Maurice Macy’s apartment. I need to know something.’
Garcia came back a moment later. ‘Got it. What do you want?’
‘Did they take a suitcase?’
Garcia looked down the items slowly, his finger on each line. He stopped at the end. ‘No suitcase on the list.’
Harper left the schoolhouse apartment. Someone had seen Sebastian wheeling a suitcase away from Denise’s building. There were suitcase tracks at Lottie Bixley’s dump site and Lucy James had seen a guy with a suitcase. Harper knew that Macy had used the suitcase, but now he was thinking something else. It wasn’t just a copycat. Sebastian was using the same suitcase. There was a link between these guys. Somehow they knew each other.
Harper got back on the phone to Garcia. ‘Mark, that report we got into Macy’s background. We got nothing on the guy, right? Get it out for me, will you?’
‘Sure. But we got nothing beyond the hospital records.’
‘Then we’re going to have to look again. I need to know if he’s got relatives. Anyone at all. Can you go back to the beginning with him? You know, starting with where the bastard was conceived?’
‘It’ll take me a little time, but head back over here and I’ll try to have it ready for you.’
‘I’ll see you in twenty,’ said Harper.
Chapter One Hundred and Two
Upper East Side
December 3, 10.34 p.m.
Nick was upset. He wanted to escape the nightmare. He wanted to forget the fishing cabin, the fear. He wanted most of all to forget Mr Hummel. Yes, Mr Hummel. He wanted to forget him. He hated him. He wanted to break him. Sebastian was there with him now. Inside him. Co-existing, but not yet in control. Nick had to keep him back.
Twang!
He snapped his elastic bracelet. What had brought Sebastian out? Yeah, it was thinking of Daddy and the girls. He didn’t really mean to hurt them. He didn’t know what he was doing. It was Sebastian, not him. Sebastian clawed at Nick’s thoughts.
Twang!
He told himself to keep going. Keep watching. What’s the baserock of it all? Did anything have a baserock? He wanted to know. Sebastian was telling him he would be famous now. Everyone would know how clever he was, how powerful… but most of all wasn’t this the thing, his mojo, his heart of hearts? Wasn’t it that Nick wanted people to see how diseased he was, how bad? That’s why he let Sebastian do those things — to shock, to show the very worst of himself that he felt. Was it that? Sebastian continued to whisper. He was an evil, evil boy. A disease.
Twang!
Kimberly was sitting about four feet from him. She was on a bar stool, as was he. He could feel her there. He had this sense about people, too. He could tell that she was on edge. Maybe something had happened to her. She wasn’t her usual cheery self.
Sebastian had followed the same pattern. Spot a mark. Trail her for a month. See if she was good enough for his sculpture. Kimberly had been in the running for a while. Sebastian had trailed hundreds of women to find the special seven that he finally decided upon. Now the sculpture was complete, he was tying up loose ends. Other people’s pain was what he was after now and Kimberly could show him a lot of that.
He’d spotted Kimberly at the airport on the way back from a trip to Texas. He was tired from the flight and feeling horny. There was something about travelling that got him excited. It was suspended animation. He had time to think bad thoughts.
It was her shoes he noticed first: green, elegant and expensive. Her face was pretty too — long and narrow with clear bones. He was expected at home but the thought of a new mark excited him, so he walked up close to her as she was waiting for a cab. As she was distracted on her cell phone, he swiped her case.
People wrote their names and addresses on their cases. He took her case and fell in love with Kimberly mostly through her delicate clothes. They were like stolen treasure to him. The secret life of things he was never allowed access to.
He was so aroused that he was shaking. First, the aroma of her. It was the faint smell of perfume mixed with the smell of the various fabrics. Beautiful. So very beautiful. He had picked up each item in turn and touched it lovingly. Laid it all out on his bed. Each thing was impossibly fragile and delicate, like webs of gossamer, but so silky to the touch.
But it was the knowing that this was wrong that really rocked his boat. This was a perverted pleasure and he liked the powerful secrecy of the taboo.
For days, the clothes had been enough. Just like with Elizabeth. He’d been satisfied with the weeks of trailing, buying the clothes she wore and the photographs. But these surrogates no longer sustained his deeper urges.
He wanted to take her. He had an inalienable right to her.
Kimberly sipped on a margarita. Why was she alone? Her fiance was fucking around, that’s why. She was hurt. He liked that. The beautiful clothes and the pain. The motto of St Sebastian — Beauty constant under torture. He licked his lips. He turned to her and raised his glass. She smiled.
Nick was losing it. Here he was in a bar he didn’t recognize and Sebastian was hunting. It was too powerful.
Twang! Twang! Twang!
Sebastian laughed and moved into the limelight. Nick was too weak. Sebastian felt the power of Nick’s body, flexed his muscles and smiled back at Kimberly.
A couple of drinks later, Sebastian and Kimberly were deep in conversation. It’s so easy to seduce when you’ve been stalking someone. You know what they like, what they feel. People are simple — you reflect back what they want to know about themselves and bingo!
‘You know what it is, Kimberly? Good people attract bad people. That’s because bad people want to be good but they don’t know how, so they use you as a model. But then they find they can’t be as good as you and they resent it. Then they punish you.’
She nodded. ‘Are you bad, then?’
The alcohol had changed her approach. He’d been working her throughout the conversation, dropping little trigger words like ‘punish’, ‘rights’, ‘revenge’ and ‘self-esteem’.
She was taking his lead so easily he was inwardly proud of himself.
‘I’m good at being bad, if that’s what you mean.’
In Sebastian’s blue Mercedes, they drove in the dark. He was talking like a man on uppers. Kimberly had
