‘But if I knew the-’
Joe shook his head. ‘You’re so beautiful. I look at you and it breaks my heart that inside that head… there is so much pain and fear.’
Tears welled in her eyes.
‘I know what that feels like,’ said Joe. ‘But I’m used to it. So you’re going to have to trust me. I’m not about to come home with all the details and add more to what you’ve already got going on.’
‘Is it worse than what the papers-’
He smiled with sad eyes. ‘You know the answer to that.’
‘You can’t filter the world for me forever, you know.’
‘Yeah?’ said Joe. ‘Well, I’ll die trying.’
Anna went to the worktop and took a tissue to wipe her eyes.
‘Do you want to go on a date tonight?’ she said.
‘What?’ said Joe. ‘Are you serious?’
She laughed. ‘That’s so depressing.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said. ‘I’m just-’
‘Yes or no: do you want to go out?’
‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘I’d love to.’
‘Then we will.’
‘Where would you like to go?’
‘Cardino’s.’
He smiled. ‘Cardino’s? I don’t know. I think I got some lightweight French girl drunk there once and she ended up having to marry me. “ I am a French woman! We do not drink beer like this! ”’
‘That is the worst accent.’ She smiled, about to walk away, but her robe slid wide open and off her shoulders. She slowly shook her head. Joe dangled the black silk belt high in his hand.
‘You gotta be quick,’ he said.
Artie Blackwell was the shortest journalist in the five boroughs. He had short, spiky grey hair and a perfect, tight grey beard, yet always managed to look unwashed. When he walked, he leaned left, weighed down by one of a number of free, branded shoulder bags. He was hovering outside the Manhattan North building, sweating in the early morning sun.
‘Woo, Case Detective Lucchesi. Someone’s being good to you.’
‘Artie,’ said Joe, glancing down. ‘Pleasure.’
Artie snorted. ‘You got to admit – it’s an odd choice, all things considered, what with the shooting and the whole Rawlins fiasco.’
‘You know the deal,’ said Joe, smiling and calm. ‘I caught the Lowry case. My partner caught the Aneto case. Oh, and I was cleared of any wrongdoing in the Riggs shooting, so here I am. And here we are, Artie.’
‘Good to see you again,’ said Artie, tipping his dark blue fisherman’s hat.
A breeze rose from nowhere and Joe was forced to turn away; Artie always smelled of his last meal. Sadly for Joe, none of them ever had been.
‘Creepy name too: The Caller…’ said Artie. ‘Does the perp make a phone call to his victims before he shows up?’
Joe rolled his eyes. ‘No. Under the bright lights of the cameras, the Chief got flustered and said “caller”. And some… journalist thought it sounded creepy enough to freak the public out. I could think of a lot of other names for the guy…’
‘Like what?’ said Artie.
Joe stopped. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘You got anything for me?’ said Artie.
‘Unless you want to do a nice three-way with the DCPI, no.’
‘I could do that.’
‘Come on, Artie. You know I’m not in a position to say shit. OK? Now, I’m coming into work a very contented man this morning, so please
…’
‘Just something that no-one else’s got. Throw me something.’
Joe looked at him like he had lost his mind. ‘Why are you even here?’
Artie shrugged. ‘I was in the neighborhood.’
Joe laughed.
Artie had to jog to keep up with him. ‘Have you made any further progress on the Duke Rawlins investigation?’
Joe spun around. ‘That’s not an investigation I’m directly involved in,’ he said. ‘And you know that, you-’ He paused. ‘Go talk to the FBI. Just go, find out who the hell you’re supposed to talk to. Goodbye, Artie.’
Joe sat at his desk with Aneto’s file in front of him. He spread out the photos of the hallway and the close- ups of the blood stains, looking for anything about him that made him the reason why the killer started here. There were no guarantees he was the first victim, but it was unlikely he wasn’t. All the squads knew to look through their files for anything similar – nothing had come up – and the chances of a body lying undiscovered in a New York apartment for over a year were non-existent. He went slowly through the images. He had seen them before, but he was looking for another angle and he had a fresh cup of coffee to back him up. Six photographs in, he stopped.
It was taken in the hallway – a close-up of Aneto’s torso, nothing remarkable, except for a dark spot at the edge of the photo. He looked closer. If it was what he thought it was, it was totally out of place. He pulled a magnifying glass out of his drawer, looking around quickly before he held it over the photo. He was right. It was a dermestid beetle. Joe had spent two years studying entomology before he dropped out to become a cop. His father was a professor in Forensic Entomology.
Joe turned back to the photo. Dermestid beetles weren’t there for William Aneto – nothing on his body would interest them yet. They came to corpses at the end. After the flies had arrived to lay their eggs and the maggots had crawled off into the dark to pupate, dermestids showed up to feed on the dried tissue. William Aneto didn’t have any dried tissue. The body was found within twenty-four hours of his murder with eight hours of night time in between when insects would not have been active.
Joe laid out all the photos of William Aneto’s apartment looking for anything else that could have attracted a dermestid beetle – they also fed on hide and hair. A bad taxidermy job could have brought them out, even the horse hair from a violin bow. Joe studied the apartment, but it was modern and minimalist, lots of plastic and chrome and smooth shiny new surfaces. There was no mounted stag’s head on the wall near the body, nothing that Joe could find that would account for the dermestid beetle. The only thing he could think of was another dead creature in the house, a mouse or a rat. But then there would have been more beetles and there were none in any of the other photos.
‘You’ve got mail,’ said Rencher, holding up a white envelope with Joe’s name on it.
Joe looked at the envelope. ‘He strikes again.’ He pulled a pair of gloves out of the drawer and put them on. He sliced the letter open: more pages, squashed into an envelope made to take only two or three. Rencher hovered by the desk.
‘I’ll let you know,’ said Joe, tilting his head towards Rencher’s desk.
Rencher shrugged and walked away. Joe walked over to the copier, made a copy of the letter for everyone, then put the original in an envelope. They hadn’t got prints from the first one, so he was hoping for better luck this time. He sat down with his copy and read through it, marking parts as he went along. When he had read it three times, he called everyone over.
‘Reminds me of school,’ said Rencher. ‘Getting a letter was the highlight of your day.’
‘You went to boarding school?’ said Martinez.
‘Yes I did,’ said Rencher. ‘Got a problem with that?’
‘Relax,’ said Martinez.
‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘Letter two, same kind of envelope, same writing, mailed around the same time from the same post office. Similar kind of shit: talking about going to some gallery, going to the park, being spiritual, baking cookies in someone else’s kitchen – whatever the hell that’s about.’ He flicked through more pages. ‘There’s a lot
