C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-FIVE
A
lone in Butts’s office the next morning, Elena Krieger looked at the letter in her hands, irritated that her palms were sweating. Her fingers trembled—not from fear but from anger—as she read it again for what felt like the thousandth time. The typed text was neat as always, free of obvious grammatical errors or misspellings, a clear indication of the author’s intelligence and education.
Dear Dr. Campbell,
I know, it’s so frustrating, isn’t it? You want your suspects—or UNSUBs, as you so touchingly call them—to fit into neat little categories, and when they don’t, it’s so disappointing. What do you have on me thus far? What kind of killer am I? Power-assertive? Really, am I the kind of man you would see lifting weights at a gym? Hardly—I think I’ll leave that particular activity to you. Anger-retaliatory? I shouldn’t think so. My dear old mum gave me no cause to hate women . . . so just exactly what am I? I guess that’s for me to know and you to find out, hmm? At any rate, I’m sure I’ve left plenty of lovely clues in this missive for that sexy linguist friend of yours to decipher. I’d love to perform some cunning linguistics on her—who wouldn’t? You two should really think about getting together, you know, and creating your own master race. (Oh, you’re thinking now, is he a neo-Nazi of some kind?) Happy hunting!
The Professor
Krieger’s face heated when she read the dirty pun. He thought he was so smart! She vowed he would be brought to justice if it was the last thing she did. And the snide comment about procreating with Campbell—disgusting. Not that she would mind—he was a very attractive man, though too thin for her taste—she preferred more robust specimens. But Elena Krieger made it a rule never to get involved with colleagues. That could only lead to trouble, and she had enough trouble just being Elena Krieger.
This UNSUB clearly knew who she was; his last letter had even been addressed to her. Of course, it would be easy enough for someone like him to find out she was working the case, and she tried not to dwell on the sensation that she was being watched. Nevertheless, she knew that on some level, her job put her in peril. It was also part of its appeal to her. She thrived on adrenaline—there was no kick quite like danger.
She put the letter down on Butts’s desk and looked at her Rolex. She was early—the others would arrive soon. She leaned on the desk and stared out the window at East Twenty-first Street. A couple of uniformed cops leaned against a blue and white patrol car, smoking. A thin whiff of smoke snaked its way through the closed windows, and she wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Revolting habit.
Though she had occasionally indulged back in her German cabaret days, it now struck her as repulsive—though perhaps not as repulsive as Leonard Butts, with his pudgy, untidy body and messy ways.
She looked at his cluttered desk and shuddered. How on earth she had been saddled working another case with him she couldn’t understand. He didn’t like her any more than she liked him, and yet here they were, together again. It reminded her of that old American television show,
The Odd Couple.
Felix and Oscar—Butts was exactly like Oscar, but she didn’t see herself as the fussy, prissy Felix. She did admire his passion for order, though—order was the closest thing Elena Krieger had to a religion, and she was convinced that this commitment to organization had led to her rapid advancement within the NYPD.
She gazed out the window at the logo on the side of the patrol car.
COURTESY
PROFESSIONALISM
RESPECT
Right,
she thought. Elena had been around the NYPD long enough to see the cracks in that façade. There were good, decent people on the force, but there were also corruption, racism, and egos. God, the egos! Of course, she was aware that hers was one of them—Elena Krieger liked to think she had no illusions about herself. She was equal to the machismo and posturing within the force, but the sheer amount of it could be wearing. She was tired of having to prove herself; both her gender and her identity as a foreigner marked her as an outsider. These days, anyone with an accent was suspect, no matter what country it came from.
Still, she thought as she looked down at the pair of lumpy uniformed officers lounging against their patrol car, she had an advantage over most of her colleagues. She was hardworking, smart and ambitious. But what really set her apart was her discipline. She knew it was a stereotype about Germans, but if she fit the stereotype, so what? She was convinced that her dedication and capacity for hard work would pay off in the long run.
She glanced at her Rolex again, her one personal luxury, running her fingertips lightly over its diamond-encrusted face. She had to hand it to the Swiss—they knew how to make watches. She didn’t wear it because it was a status symbol; she wore it because it was a finely crafted piece of machinery. Elena Krieger liked things that
worked
. She couldn’t stand having anything broken or damaged around—chairs with missing slats, cracked or chipped dishes, ripped upholstery.
Her personal rule was either mend it within a week or throw it out. It didn’t matter whether or not the object had sentimental value—if it was broken, it had lost its usefulness. Period—no exceptions. She had once discarded a cuckoo clock that had belonged to her grandfather because it couldn’t be mended. Her father had been upset when he found out, but that was just too bad, she thought. He should have taken better care of it.
Elena Krieger was deeply threatened by entropy. Her entire life was a struggle against chaos, decay and entropy. She had a horror of disease, aging and impairment of any kind. She had long ago made a pact with herself that if she were ever permanently incapacitated, she would take her own life. She had the drugs stowed safely away in the back of her underwear drawer, and her lawyer had a copy of her living will, which stated that she was not to be kept alive if through injury or disease she were to enter “a persistent vegetative state.”
She stepped away from the window. Her colleagues’ meeting with the NYPD top brass should be over by now. She was glad she hadn’t been asked to join Campbell and Butts to explain why another girl had turned up dead. Well, maybe she was a little peeved at being left out, but she was more relieved than not.
She looked at her watch again. They were fifteen minutes late. Probably that fat little detective had stopped somewhere to eat. It was disgusting the way he was always shoveling food into his mouth. She could hardly bear to look at him.
The phone on his desk rang, and without thinking, she snatched it up.
“Elena Krieger here.”
At first there was silence, then a soft whimpering in the background, and what sounded like a girl’s voice pleading. Elena strained to hear what she was saying—it sounded like “No, please—don’t.”
“Who is this?” she barked into the phone, fighting the wave of nausea and panic sweeping over her. “Who’s calling?”
The whimpering stopped. There was the sound of heavy breathing, and a man’s voice said, “Tag, you’re it.”
Then the line went dead.
Elena Krieger stood with the receiver in her hand, staring at the phone. The sound of that voice would stay with her for some time.
Tag, you’re it.
C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-SIX
W
hen Butts and Lee arrived at the precinct, they found a very shaken Elena Krieger. Even her Germanic stoicism couldn’t hide the fact that she was upset; worry lines creased her elegant forehead, and her hand trembled as she handed the note she held to Lee.
“It was addressed to you, so I thought you should—”
“Thanks,” he said, taking it from her.
It was a copy of the original note found on Victoria Hwang, which was still being processed in the lab for possible prints, DNA and trace evidence, though no one in the room expected any good news about that.
“Before you read it, I—I think he called here,” she said.
“What?” Butts exclaimed. “Are you shittin’ me? What did he say? How do you know it was him?”
She regarded him coolly. “To answer your questions in order, no, I am not ‘shitting you,’ and what a lovely expression that is, by the way.”
Butts snorted impatiently. “Just tell us what happened.”
She went on to recount the phone call, the girl in the background, and the creepy comment the caller made before hanging up.
“What did his voice sound like?” asked Lee.
“Educated, definitely British.”
“And the girl?” said Butts. “Someone could just be pullin’ your leg. There’s a lot of crazies out there who like to home in on investigations.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I thought of that. And it might have been someone just playacting—but if it was, she was very convincing.”
“This town is full of out-of-work actors,” Butts remarked. “And they all need money. I can see some sicko paying one of ’em to do this.”
“Could the girl’s voice have been a recording?” Lee asked.
“It was pretty faint, way in the background,” she said. “Yes, it could have been a recording.”
“You’re thinking he recorded Victoria or another one of his victims?” said Butts.
“Maybe,” Lee answered. “But why didn’t the call go through the switchboard?”
“He musta had my direct line,” said Butts. “That’s not so hard to get hold of.” He looked at Lee and nodded at the note. “So, what’s he got to say there?”
“There’s a lot of posturing—he alternates between taunting us and showing off how much he knows.” He handed the note to Butts and turned to Krieger. “But you’re the linguistics expert. What can you tell us?”
She bit her lip. “Based on vocabulary and word usage, I’d say it’s definitely written by the same person as the other two. Highly educated, articulate, obviously, as we said before. The phrase ‘my dear old mum’ suggests once again that his origins are the British Isles.”
“Why do you think he addressed it to you?” Butts asked Lee.
“He wants to be in the middle of the investigation—to follow it and insert himself every step of the way. He sees me as someone who is trying to ‘figure him out,’ so the note is an attempt to make a connection.”
The door was flung open, and Jimmy Chen entered, out of breath.
“I was just at the morgue,” he said.
“Yeah? What did you learn?” asked Butts.
Jimmy held out a manila envelope. “We’re dealing with one sick bastard.”
“We knew that already,” Krieger said. “Let’s see the photos.”
Jimmy spread the pictures out on the desk. Victoria Hwang’s body, like the others, had been disfigured by tiny pricks in her torso. This pattern was different yet again—it was circular, a series of overlapping swirls, sort of like the center of a sunflower.
“What the hell?” said Butts. “What is this?”
Jimmy looked at the others. “He would probably say, that’s for him to know and us to find out.”
C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-SEVEN
I
t was evening by the time their meeting broke up. Butts left to catch a bus to Jersey, and Jimmy had some more witness interviews to do before heading to his parents’ place to look after his brother for a few hours. He took copies of the case photos with him, and Lee agreed to join him downtown later.
As Elena Krieger was putting on her coat to leave, Lee approached her.
“Can I ask you something?”
“I suppose so. What can I do for you?”
“I have a letter I’d like you to look at, if you have a couple of minutes.”
She crossed her long arms. “What kind of letter?”
“It’s a suicide note.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Whether it’s real or not.”
She looked intrigued. “You have reason to believe it’s fake?”
“Yes,” he said, taking out the note and the sample of Brian O’Reilly’s writing Gemma had given him. “Here’s some of his writing for comparison.”
She raised one plucked eyebrow. “You have a sample of the dead man’s writing?”
“I know his sister.” He knew he was being evasive, but he didn’t want to explain any further—he hoped Krieger wouldn’t connect it with Laura’s disappearance. “It’s for another case I’m working on.”
“I see,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “Let me have a look.” She laid the notes side by side on the desk and studied them, bending low over the papers. He tried not to stare at the dark line where her breasts touched. She bent lower, squinting, and he realized Elena Krieger was nearsighted—but apparently too vain to wear glasses. He didn’t care so long as she helped him get to the bottom of Brian O’Reilly’s death.
She straightened up and handed him the papers.
“These are the writings of two different people,” she stated.
“So the suicide note is a fake?”
“I don’t know the circumstances of this alleged suicide,” she replied briskly. “It is extremely unusual to find a typed suicide note, though not unheard of. But I can tell you, these are not the writing of one man. Here,” she said, snatching the papers back from him. “Look at the consistent misuse of the apostrophe in
it’s
here in the unquestioned document. There is no such punctuation error in the purported suicide note.”
“You’re right!” Lee agreed. “What else?”
“Well, there are so many things. The vocabulary in the suicide note is more sophisticated, the sentence construction more elegant—to be honest, they don’t resemble each other in any way.”
“Thank you,” Lee said. “Thank you very much.”
She regarded him with undisguised curiosity. “So this is another case you’re working on?”
“Thanks so much,” he said again instead of answering her question. “I owe you one.” He put on his coat quickly and opened the door. “See you tomorrow!” he said, slipping out into the hall. He could feel her disapproval trailing him all the way to the lobby.
At home, he called Gemma O’Reilly, got her voice mail, and left her a message to call him back. Then he changed into running shoes and sweats and went for a jog along the East River.
The warm weather that had followed the storm had continued—the air was unseasonably balmy as he headed east through the streets of the East Village. He inhaled the salt air along with the faint aroma of fish bones as seagulls wheeled above, their faint, shrill voices carrying out to sea on an offshore wind.
His breathing synchronized with the rhythm of his feet on the pavement, snatches of phrases running through his head.
Anger-excitation, an-ger-ex-ci-ta-tion, an-ger-ex-ci-ta-tion.
He ran faster, harder, hoping to make the words go away, but they stayed, circling his brain like the seagulls overhead.
AN-ger-ex-ci-TA-tion, an-GER-EX-CI-TA-TION. . .
He sprinted past the tennis courts to the old tugboat dock at the bottom of the park. It used to be open farther south along the water, but now the esplanade stopped at the northern end of the soccer fields, where a small brick house stood alone at the edge of the water. Years ago a park ranger had told him it was built as a tugboat dock and shelter for their pilots. The building looked lonely and abandoned—vines crept up its ancient walls and twisted around its cracked windowpanes, the interior cold and dark.
He stopped to stretch, and for a moment he had the feeling something inside the house moved. He peered at the nearest window, but an iron fence encircled the building, and he couldn’t get closer than a few yards away. He decided it was his imagination and turned around to go back. As he turned around, he had the feeling that he was being followed. He craned his neck around behind him, but there was no one in sight.
He ran hard all the way back to his place, unable to shake the uncanny sensation of being trailed by . . . what? Or whom? He told himself it was ridiculous, but he was glad when he turned the lock on his front door, double bolting and sliding on the security chain. There was no sign of Chuck. He wondered if his friend had softened and gone to Jersey to be with his wife, but his things were still neatly arranged in the spare bedroom.
He showered and changed, then went back out, heading south toward Chinatown to meet Jimmy. As he crossed Houston, his cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket; the screen said
Fiona.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, thinking it was odd she was calling. Fiona Campbell hated cell phones.
“I tried calling your apartment, but your voice mail picked up,” she said, sounding irritated.
“Well, you’ve got me now,” he said, stepping aside to avoid a deliveryman riding his bicycle on the sidewalk. Piles of slush on the avenues made cycling on the roads hazardous. He watched the man weave around pedestrians, balancing two large plastic bags of food on either handlebar.
“So what do you think?” Fiona said.
“About what—Kylie?”
“Of
course
Kylie,” she said, sounding even more irritated.
“She’s clearly struggling with some issues.”
“Well, obviously. But what do you think we should do about it?”
“I don’t think you’re going to like my answer.”
“Try me.”
“I think she needs professional help.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“I also think that we need to stay out of her hair. Right now she just feels pressured by us; even our concern for her is another source of stress.
“But we’re her
family
!”
“Sometimes the people closest to you are the ones who can help you the least. I’m pretty sure she sees us as part of the problem right now,” he added, shaking his head at an Italian maître d’ gesturing energetically to him outside his Little Italy restaurant.
The temperature was falling, but the man stood in the street wearing nothing but a black three-piece suit, smiling and beckoning people to come inside. The only two Manhattan neighborhoods where Lee saw much of the hard sell were Little Italy and the Indian places on East Sixth Street. They weren’t even owned by Indians—most of them were actually Bangladeshi—but the scene was similar to Little Italy. Owners and managers stood in the street in formal dress in all weather, smiling and cajoling potential customers.
“So I’m just part of the problem now,” Fiona said petulantly.
Lee smiled at the underdressed maître d’ and shook his head again. The man’s face fell a little, but he gave a friendly wave as Lee walked away.
“Not you in particular, Mom—all of us. That’s just the way it is sometimes. We all need to back off a little—but get her someone she can feel safe talking to.”
“She can’t feel safe with me?”
“She feels
obligated
to you, Mom—to all of us. She needs to talk to someone who’s neutral, who doesn’t expect anything of her.”
“Well, if that’s how you really see it,” Fiona said huffily, “then we’ll get her a therapist.”
“Good,” Lee said. “I can talk to George about it if you want. I can probably get some recommendations for good therapists in your area.”
“No, that’s quite all right,” she said. “George and I are responsible for her; we’ll find her a therapist.”
“Okay, Mom. I have to go—I’m on the way to meet Jimmy Chen.”
“Jimmy Chen?” Her voice softened. “How
is
Jimmy these days?”
“He’s good, Mom—he sends you his love.”
“Such a nice young man,” Fiona sighed. “So polite.”
Lee smiled. Jimmy was a lot of things, but polite wasn’t one of them. In fact, he had admitted that some of his behavior was to dispel the stereotype of the polite Asian. Lee didn’t have the heart to tell him that he didn’t find the denizens of Chinatown especially polite.
“I’ll tell Jimmy you said hi,” he said. “Let me know what happens with Kylie, okay?”
“All right,” she said.
He swung west on Grand Street, past the loud fishmongers in dirty white aprons smeared with fish blood, past the rows of ducks hanging on metal hooks in windows, past the bins of inscrutable Chinese vegetables looking like the spawn of alien life-forms, some huge and green and hairy, others brown and mysteriously dimpled. He turned south on Mott, striding past strolling tourists sipping from plastic cups of bubble tea, past the jumble of restaurants with names like Double Happiness and Golden Pavilion, past the shacks of hardfaced women selling cheap plastic jewelry and papier-mâché dragons. He inhaled the aroma of garlic sauce, soy and vinegar, of sizzling platters of crabs and bubbling cauldrons of sweet-and-sour soup, taking in the fascinating, bustling chaos of Chinatown.
He arrived at Jimmy’s a little after eight. His friend opened the door and beckoned him inside.
“Want some ramen, Angus?”
“Sure.”
“Barry loves ramen,” Jimmy said, closing the door behind him.
“Isn’t that a Japanese dish?”
“Hey, we invented noodles! Even Fettuccine Alfredo wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for us,” Jimmy said, carrying three steaming bowls of soup on a tray.
“And Marco Polo.”
“Whatever. Barry!” he called. “Your ramen is ready!”
Barry appeared at the door to his room in his pajamas, clutching a stuffed panda. He looked like an overgrown child.
“Hi,” said Lee. “Remember me?”
“Remember me,” Barry echoed. “I’m Barry, short for Barrington.”
“He knows,” said Jimmy. “You remember his name? He’s Lee.”
“Leeleeleelee,” Barry sang, sitting down at the low table in front of the rattan couch.
They ate in silence for a while, Barry slurping loudly as he sucked the noodles into his mouth.
“This is good,” said Lee.
“Goody-goody good good,” Barry said, gulping down the rest of his soup.
“Okay, now we’re going to work for a while, Barry,” said Jimmy. “So do you have some math problems to do in your room?”
Barry hugged his panda and looked at his brother.
“What is it, Barry?” Jimmy asked.
Barry squirmed. “The supersonic wolves. I think they’re there.”
Jimmy turned to Lee. “He thinks there are supersonic wolves living under his bed.”
“I can hear them,” Barry said.
“Okay,” said Jimmy. “Do you want me to come in?”
“Can I stay here?”
Jimmy looked at Lee.
“I’m okay with it, if you don’t think the photos will be too disturbing,” Lee said.
“Okay,” Jimmy said to his brother, “but you have to be quiet.”
“I have to be quiet,” Barry replied, settling on the sofa with his stuffed panda.
“Very quiet,” said Jimmy.
“In
fact
, very quiet,” Barry echoed.
They cleared the table and spread out the pictures of the victims in the order in which they were killed.
“I’m trying to figure if there’s a meaning to his progression,” said Lee. “First he takes the little finger. He does that twice. Then, with the third victim, he takes two fingers. Why?”
“He’s escalating.”
“But not in the usual sense. His MO is the same; there’s no increase in violence, and the placement of the bodies is the same, except for this one detail. What does it
mean
?”
“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“I don’t buy that. He’s extremely methodical and precise. If you combine it with the—graphics—it has to mean
something
. ”
“Okay,” said Jimmy, looking at the photos. “First he cuts off one, one again, then two—”
“And then there are the designs he makes on them. They keep changing. What’s that about? It has to mean something, but what?”
Barry’s voice came from behind them, with its peculiar flat tone. “The Fibonacci sequence.”