'Whatever happened to the old 'wait and see' attitude?' Peterson asked. 'Used to be a valued principle in policing, back in the day. Don't rile the public. Figure the killer will get tired of the high cost of living in the big city and move on. Become someone else's headache. Seems like this character's already moving upstate.'
'And there's a gubernatorial primary the second week in September,' Scully said. 'Nobody wants to sit on a political hot potato.'
Peterson opened the foil on a turkey sandwich and handed me half. 'Give the man what he needs, Mike. You two have anything to contribute,' he said to Mercer and me, 'feel free to jump in.'
'What do we know about Connie Wade?' Scully asked.
Mike read her physical description from the notes he'd taken in his first phone conversation and our meeting with Bart Hinson. He outlined what he knew about her background and family, where she had traveled from and when she had last contacted relatives and friends. He described the injuries and the manner in which they were similar to Amber and Elise's.
'Elise Huff,' Scully said, scanning the police reports. 'Have you made any progress finding this guy she was supposed to meet?'
'No, sir. The bar car's going to give me some help this evening,' Mike said, referring to the detectives assigned to check on all the establishments that sell liquor and are licensed by the SLA. 'I hit a few clubs near the Pioneer last night but came up empty.'
'I don't need another disappearing act tonight. I want every young lady who goes out on the town for a cocktail to come home safe. Troopers still waiting on confirmation about what Connie Wade was wearing?'
'They're thinking uniform. Fits in with the whole military fixation this guy has.'
Scully was back to Elise Huff. 'And Huff, in this airline outfit, you think it could have fooled a guy who knows his stuff?'
Mike scoffed at the suggestion. 'What? Like it was real military gear? No way. I'm assuming he knows better. She had on a neat white blouse, wings on the collar, and navy pants with a crease up the leg. But our killer wouldn't be thinking wild blue yonder.'
'Don't forget she had that ring of her grandmother's she always wore,' Mercer said. 'Her best friend claims she's a storyteller, commissioner. Maybe our perv recognized the ring and knew what it meant. If the perp makes his pickup in a bar, maybe she told him she had a West Point connection.'
'I'm willing to buy that,' Peterson said. 'But Amber Bristol, I don't see how she fits with these other two girls. I like the manner of death and the cuffs and the remote dump, but there's nothing military about her.'
'What's Herb Ackerman's condition?' Scully asked. 'Maybe he can establish a connection.'
'They wouldn't let me back at him yesterday,' Mike said. 'Still too groggy from the overdose. Mercer and I will put him on our list for tomorrow. I gotta be honest with you, sir, he doesn't strike me as recruit material for Parris Island.'
'I've met the man, Chapman. I don't see him rowing a body out in the middle of the Hudson, either-'
'Not without really shitting in his pants, sir.'
'Let's see how long it takes these investigative journalists to sniff out their own. I'll be leaving his involvement out of the news bulletin. But Ackerman was a war correspondent in Vietnam. Read his columns sometime. He knows as much about our armed forces-and weaponry- as anybody in the media. I'm just looking for connections here,' Scully said, listing commands for us to follow. 'Find out who does Ackerman's research, who edits his copy. What led him to write about the ferry terminal. Maybe he's got a young buff on staff-somebody who knows his secret. We don't even have Amber's client list. Don't even know if this freak is in her little black book. And how about that bar owner? Amber's boyfriend.'
'Jim Dylan. That's still a work in progress. He looked good to me before we found Huff's body. I haven't given up the idea that he hired someone to get rid of Amber.'
With us all trailing, Keith Scully went back to his office and stacked the Bristol and Huff case reports next to each other on his desk, then began a third pile with his pages of notes about Connie Wade. He pursed his lips and shook his head. 'Yeah, well he's damn unlucky if the guy he hired can't turn off the faucet when he's in the mood to kill.'
'I haven't mentioned Amber Bristol's superintendent, Keith,' Peterson said. 'He's dirty. Has a couple of assaults he got walked out of court on. Beats his woman.'
'Bring him back in,' Scully said, then pointed to Guido Lentini. 'Be sure to get details on the old cases for the mayor.'
'Commissioner Scully,' I said, replaying in my mind each conversation I'd had about these women, 'do you have the report Mike wrote up based on my interview with Herb Ackerman? It was Wednesday morning, before I went to court.'
He licked his thumb and looked through the dates on the top of each page. The image Herb Ackerman painted came back to me faster than the police commissioner could pull it up on paper.
'Amber Bristol,' I said. 'The night she walked out of Ackerman's office she was wearing a new outfit. She looked just like the captain of a ship, he told me. White cotton, double-breasted jacket. It was trimmed with gold buttons and epaulets, with some gold braid on the shoulders.'
'That doesn't make her an admiral,' Mike said, blowing me off.
Ray Peterson crushed his cigarette against the sole of his shoe. 'I see where you're going.'
'Could be what turns the perp on, Commissioner, is women in uniform,' I said. 'Not authentic, not armed services for real, but just the look of it. He's a sexual psychopath, guys. Maybe all it takes to trigger his sadistic urge is the sight of a woman in uniform.
TWENTY-THREE
What you know about serial killers couldn't fill a thimble, Chapman.' Dickie Draper had arrived twenty minutes later and joined us in the conference room.
We'd been ordered to marshal all the case evidence for the mayor's presentation. The long wooden table with elegantly carved legs that had once been the centerpiece of Teddy Roosevelt's office in his time as New York City's police commissioner was covered with DD5s and crime scene photographs.
Scully and Peterson were scrambling to notify their borough commanders. By 5:00 p.m., when the mayor would make his announcement, he would have to be able to say that he had assembled a task force to search for the killer. Officers would be pulled from squads and foot patrol to give the community the illusion of safety when the frenzy started
What I do know, Dickie, is that while you were daydreaming about your next meal, Elise Huff's killer struck again.'
'What can I say? The odds were against it.' The mustard from his ham and provolone sandwich was smeared on Dickie's jowls.
'We're at three and counting. That's the FBI's magic number to go serial.'
'Pulp fiction. A broad can't go to the supermarket or the hairdresser without getting snatched by a lunatic if you're looking for box office dollars or best sellers,' Dickie said, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. 'C'mon, can you name a serial killer who's worked this city in the last five years?'
I couldn't think of a single one.
'Rapists, sure. Serial sex offenders, you probably have fifteen, twenty patterns a year in Manhattan, just like we got. Queens and the Bronx, too. I'm right about that, aren't I, Alex?'
'Yes.'
It was an indisputable fact. There was never a month when the NYPD's Special Victims Units weren't looking for recidivist rapists- usually several of them at any given time. There were a hundred Floyd Warrens in this country for every serial killer, who are far more common in the pages of crime novels than in real life.
'What are we supposed to be doing here?' Dickie asked, walking around the table to look at the exhibits that had been laid out.
'Give the commissioner the answers to all the questions he'll be asked by the reporters,' Mike said.
'What questions?'
