Susan settled in bed with the book. Then, knowing she was not able to focus on the print, she laid it down and turned on the television. Doug came into the bedroom just as the ten o’clock news began. “It’s too lonesome out there.” He sat on the bed and reached for her hand. “How’s my girl?”
“Good question,” Susan said. “How is she?”
He attempted to pass it off as a joke. Tilting her chin, he said, “She looks pretty good to me.”
They both turned to watch the screen as the anchorman gave the headline news. “Erin Kelley, a prize-winning young jewelry designer, was found strangled on the West Fifty-sixth Street pier. More after this.”
A commercial.
Susan glanced at Doug. He was staring at the screen, his pallor a ghastly white.
“Doug, what is it?”
He did not seem to have heard her.
“… Police are searching for Petey Potters, a drifter who was known to have been living in this shack and may have observed the body when it was abandoned on this cold, debris-strewn pier.”
When the segment was completed, Doug turned to Susan. As though he had just heard her question, he snapped, “Nothing’s the matter. Nothing.” Beads of perspiration were forming on his forehead.
At three in the morning, Susan was awakened from her own uneasy sleep by Doug thrashing beside her. He was mumbling something. A name? “… no, can’t…” The name again. Susan propped herself up on one arm and listened intently.
Erin. That was it. The name of the young woman who’d been found murdered. She was about to shake Doug awake when he suddenly quieted. With growing horror, Susan realized why the newscast had so upset him. Undoubtedly, he’d linked it to that terrible time in college when he was one of the students questioned about the girl who had been strangled.
VI SATURDAY February 23
On Saturday morning, Charley read the New York Post with intense fascination.
COPYCAT MURDER was the banner-sized headline. The similarity of Erin Kelley’s death to the True Crimes program about Nan Sheridan was the focus of the story on the inside pages. Someone had tipped an investigative reporter from the Post about the letter to Nan Sheridan’s mother warning that a young woman from New York would be murdered on Tuesday night. The reporter, quoting an unidentified source, wrote that the FBI was on the trail of a possible serial killer. In the past two years, seven young women from Manhattan had disappeared after answering personal ads. Erin Kelley had been answering personal ads.
The circumstances of Nan Sheridan’s death were rehashed in full.
Erin Kelley’s background; interviews with colleagues in the jewelry business.
Their responses identical. Erin was a warm, lovely person, immensely talented.
The picture the Post used was the one Erin had sent Charley. That delighted him. The network was going to repeat the True Crimes episode about Nan ’s death Wednesday night. That would be so interesting to watch. Of course he’d taped it last month, but even so, to see it again, knowing that hundreds of thousands of people would be playing amateur detective. Who did it? Who was smart enough to get away with it?
Charley frowned. Copycat.
Copycat meant they thought someone else was imitating him. Anger rushed through him, stark, raging anger. They had no right not to credit him. Just as Nan had had no right not to invite him to her party fifteen years ago. He’d go back to the secret place in the next few days. He needed to be there. He’d turn on the video and dance in step with Astaire. It wouldn’t be Ginger, or Leslie, or Ann Miller in his arms.
His heart began beating faster. This time it wouldn’t even be Nan. It would be Darcy.
He picked up Darcy’s picture. The soft brown hair, the slender body, the wide, inquiring eyes. How much lovelier would that body be when he held it, rigid and cold in his arms?
Copycat.
Again he frowned. The anger was pounding at his temples, causing one of the terrible headaches to begin. It is I, Charley, alone who has the power of life and death over these women. I, Charley, broke through the prison of the other soul and now dominate him at will.
He would take Darcy and crush the life from her as he had crushed it from the others. And he would confound the authorities with his genius, confuse and bewilder their tiresome minds.
Copycat.
The people who wrote that should see the shoe boxes in the basement. Then they’d know. Those boxes that contained one shoe and one dancing slipper from the foot of each of the dead girls beginning with Nan.
Of course.
There was a way to prove he wasn’t a copycat. His body shook with silent, mirthless laughter.
Oh yes, indeed. There was a way.
VII SATURDAY February 23 THROUGH TUESDAY February 26
The next week for Darcy passed as though she was a robot who had been wound up and programmed to perform specific tasks.
Accompanied by Vince D’Ambrosio and a detective from the local precinct, she went to Erin ’s apartment on Saturday. There were three more calls that had been received after she’d been in the apartment on Friday morning. Darcy rewound the answering machine. One was from the manager at Bertolini’s. “Miss Kelley, we gave your check to your manager, Mr. Stratton. We cannot tell you how pleased we are with the necklace.”
Darcy raised her eyebrows. “I never heard Erin refer to Stratton as her manager.”
The second call was from someone who identified himself as Box 2695. “Erin, it’s Milton. We went out last month. I’ve been away. I’d like to see you again. My phone number is 555-3681. And listen, I’m sorry if I came on a little too strong last time.”
The third call was from Michael Nash. “He left a message the other night,” Darcy said.
Vince copied the names and numbers. “We’ll leave the tape on for the next few days.”
Vince had told Darcy that forensics experts from the NYPD would arrive shortly to go over Erin ’s apartment for possible evidence. She had asked Vince if she could come with him and get Erin ’s private papers. “My name is on her bank account and insurance policies as trustee for her father. She told me the papers were in her file under his name.”
Erin ’s instructions were simple and explicit. If anything happened to Erin, as agreed, Darcy would use her insurance to pay nursing home expenses. She had contracted with a funeral director in Wellesley that when the time came he would handle her father’s arrangements. Everything in her apartment, all her personal jewelry and clothing, were left to Darcy Scott.
There was a brief note for Darcy: “Darce, this is surely a just-in-case. But I know you’ll keep your promise to look after Dad if I’m not around. And if that ever should happen, thanks for all the great times we had together, and have fun for both of us.”
Dry-eyed, Darcy looked at the familiar signature.
“I hope you’ll follow her advice,” Vince said quietly. “I will someday,” Darcy told him. “But not yet. Would you make a copy for me of that personal ads file I gave you?”
“Sure,” Vince said, “but why? We’re going to look up the people who placed the ads she circled.”
“But you’re not going to date them. She answered some ads for both of us. Maybe I’ll get calls from people who took her out.”
Darcy left as the forensics crew arrived. She went directly home and began to make phone calls. The funeral director in Wellesley. Sympathy, then practicality. He would send a hearse to the morgue when Erin ’s body was released. What about clothing? Open casket?
