“You said it yourself,” Bickerstaff told her. “Compulsion. He’s locked into a ritual. Gotta do it the same way every time.”
Horn glanced over at the intense and somber techs gathered like visiting physicians around Letty Fonsetta’s body.
“What do we know about this one?” he asked.
Paula tucked in her chin and consulted her notes. “Forty-one years old, divorced, a stock analyst and sometimes TV personality. She was on a financial channel just this morning, touting stocks.”
“Anybody still pay attention to people who do that?”
“Sure it wasn’t the comedy channel?” Bickerstaff asked.
Paula glanced up from her notes to nail him with a glare. “Neighbors said she pretty much kept to herself but was friendly enough. Didn’t notice any men coming or going at her place. A career type. And successful.”
“Like Alice Duggan,” Bickerstaff said.
Paula had closed her notepad. “There’s something else she had in common with Duggan. They were both public figures. Not exactly famous, but public. Duggan was an off-Broadway actress with her name and photo on a poster and playbills outside a theater. And Letty Fonsetta was recently on television.”
Once again, Horn was glad he’d chosen Paula for his investigative team. “They’d be easy enough to find and follow,” he said. “This is a media city. Lots of prospective victims like that. Mandle chooses his prey from public women who are most likely to be living alone, then finds out where they live, probably by following them from wherever they practice their professions. If his simple requirements are met, they’re in his web.”
“If they live alone in high-floor apartments,” Paula said, “they’re as good as dead as soon as he lays eyes on them. And there might be another reason he’s choosing public figures. He understands that people feel they know them, maybe even identify with them. Women will think,
“It might be simpler than that,” Bickerstaff said. “Maybe he’s murdering women in the public eye because he knows they’re attractive and he’s in a hurry. Instead of walking around looking at the buffet, he’s choosing from a menu.”
“Compulsion,” Paula said. “Getting more powerful and controlling. More urgent.”
“At least Anne isn’t in the public eye,” Bickerstaff said.
“She doesn’t have to be,” Paula said. “Mandle already knows where she lives, and probably where she works.” She glanced at Horn, maybe regretting her words. She and Bickerstaff exchanged a look.
Horn seemed not to have heard them. After a parting glance at the carnage, he instructed them to follow their usual procedure, then left Letty Fonsetta’s apartment as soon as possible.
He already had his hand in his pocket and was clutching his cell phone. He wanted to get someplace where he could speak privately. Wanted to tighten security around Anne immediately.
Compulsion.
Another one. He had to find another one, a chosen one. Had to work fast. Wanted to get to his goal, to Anne Horn.
To get this over with, even though he yearned to draw it out, to enjoy it. And he
He might not even have glanced at her as he walked past the Projections movie theater except for the usher standing outside smoking a cigarette, leaning down, and flirting through the window slot where money and tickets changed hands. “How’s it goin’, Nadine? You wanna sell me a ticket for a ride?”
And there she was, blond and beautiful and in a blouse that definitely needed strong seams.
He glanced at the outside poster to see what movie was playing at the small neighborhood theater.
So maybe Nadine was a possibility. Worked late. Not so young at second glance. On display in the ticket booth. Probably selling movie tickets was her second job. Hungry for money she might not need if she had a man in her life. Maybe this was the one, even though she wasn’t a high-powered career-woman type. Or married. If you had a husband or kid you wouldn’t work this kind of evening job. Not if you were a righteous woman.
Sitting there like a whore in a glassed, bright showcase, every man giving you a look as he drives past, sexy blonde showing off cleavage while she sells tickets to fools who want to escape life for a while in an old black- and-white movie. Robinson, the tough-guy crime kingpin, trading snarls with Humphrey Bogart while the wind blew harder. At least it wasn’t a Woody Allen movie. Old guy slobbering all over women a third his age. Fucking sick!
She did look like the one. And she might live nearby and walk home after work. He had the time tonight. He could wait. He could watch. Follow like an extra shadow. Find out where she lived, how she lived.
Where she’d die.
43
Pressure was working on Horn, slowing and muddling his thinking, undermining him. The subtle knowledge was infuriating to him and itself served to hasten the process. He knew it was all according to Mandle’s plan.
Horn was at his desk in his den, examining the reports given to him by Paula and Bickerstaff. A glass of scotch sat on the green blotter pad where it wouldn’t leave a ring. Somewhere in his mind was the knowledge that he was drinking too much lately, that he had no way of knowing when he might suddenly have to go up against a killer and would need every bit of mental and physical ability he could muster.
He took a sip of scotch.
Paula and Bickerstaff were right about Fonsetta’s neighbors being of no help. The same could be said of the supers of adjoining buildings. Like Fonsetta’s building, neither one had a doorman. That must have made it easy for Mandle.
This was odd. He was the sort who wanted everyone to know it had been difficult.
Horn set the reports aside and looked again at the accompanying photographs from the Fonsetta murder file. He felt a lump in his throat, the familiar anger and fear as he shuffled the crime scene photos: Letty Fonsetta’s corpse wrapped in blood-soaked sheets, a tech’s hand carelessly resting on her shoulder; shots of the bedroom from various angles, showing a dresser cluttered with makeup jars and bottles; a close-up of the marble clock with blood and a blur of hair on one corner. There was the bedroom window, with its cut-out crescent in the glass; the familiar smears from the soap used to quiet the glass cutter; and the masking tape used to hold the removed piece of glass and keep it from falling and shattering below. There were shots of the roof where Mandle had lowered himself to gain entry: recently disturbed gravel; a slight footprint impression in the soft tar, so shallow and imperfect not even shoe size could be determined; scrapes on a vent pipe where a static line had been affixed; marks on the roof tile from where said line had rubbed while Mandle had descended and then ascended. There was also a close-up of a round metal pillbox that had contained breath mints and looked as if it had been on the roof for years.
Horn tapped the edges of the photos on the desk to even them, then dropped them on top of the reports. He stared at the clutter on his desk. A lot of typing, images, and handwritten notes-all of it not adding up to much. Letty Fonsetta was still dead. Aaron Mandle was still on the loose. Justice was still somewhere with Elvis.
And the world was still a scary place. Right now, New York especially.
Horn hesitated while reaching for the small humidor on the desk, then remembered with a pang that Anne no longer lived here and wouldn’t care about the tobacco scent.
He removed a cigar from the humidor, clipped its end, and fired it up with the silver lighter that had been a gift from Anne, on the condition he always smoke outside.
Then he leaned back in his desk chair, relaxed, and let his mind wander, deliberately not thinking about anything in particular. Sometimes when he did that, something-usually obvious in retrospect-would pop into his
