C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-NINE
D
etective Leonard Butts was irritated. Sitting at the back of the lecture hall, he was only half listening to Campbell’s lecture; most of his attention was focused on the tall, thin man a few seats away. He couldn’t look at the guy directly, but he could sense the man’s presence. Butts was only there in case the UNSUB turned up, and Campbell had given Butts the signal that this could be their perp. He longed to jump from his seat, collar the guy and drag him down to interrogation. But all he could do was sit tight and wait.
Butts fidgeted and scratched himself, sighed and shifted in his seat, until he thought he would go nuts. He kept an eye out in case the thin man bolted from the lecture hall, but his mark showed no evidence of any desire to leave.
The room was too hot, his shirt collar was itchy, and his feet were beginning to swell. He longed to pull off his leather oxfords and rub his toes. He wished the thin man would leave so he could dash after him. Not that he could do anything, really—the man had committed no crimes they were aware of, and you couldn’t arrest a guy for acting suspicious. Too bad, Butts thought. If this was the UNSUB, it would be frustrating to just watch him walk out.
Finally the lecture was over. Butts gathered up his coat and hat, trying to act like just another spectator. But he kept an eye on the thin man, who was also putting on his coat. The man didn’t look his way once, which was good—Butts was doing his best to remain anonymous. He was closer to the exit door, so he shuffled behind the line of people into the hallway. The thin man was right behind him.
Once outside, Butts turned around to see the man smiling at him as he buttoned his coat.
“Hello, Detective Butts. I thought that was a very interesting lecture, didn’t you?”
Leonard Butts was not usually at a loss for words, but all he could do was stare at the tall specter of a man who stood before him. In the lecture hall, he had only caught glimpses of him from the side, and now for the first time he had a really good look. The man’s height and excessive leanness were arresting enough, but there was something terrible and mesmerizing about the thin, jagged scar across his face. It was like the mark of Cain, physical evidence of the evil in his soul. It seemed to pulsate with an angry red heat. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.
“You know, I was taught it’s rude to stare,” the man said. Butts wasn’t good with accents, but this guy’s seemed vaguely British.
“Yeah?” said Butts. “You wanna take a slug at me? Go ahead.”
A couple of students leaving the lecture room glanced at Butts as he spoke. A young Latina woman whispered something to her companion, and both girls giggled.
The thin man brushed some lint from the sleeve of his elegant wool coat. “Fisticuffs are so vulgar. And, speaking of vulgarity, don’t you find that name a bit overwrought—the ‘Alleyway Strangler’? I mean, talk about Gothic!”
Butts narrowed his eyes, hands on his hips. “You got a better one?”
The man leaned back on his heels and crossed his long arms as he watched the rest of the stragglers leaving the lecture hall. “Nice try, Detective. But if I were to suggest a name to you, it might just match a communication you may have received from a person claiming to be the killer. Notice I say,
claiming
to be. Who knows if he or she really is?”
“How do you know we’ve received somethin’?”
“I said,
may
have received. If you have, allow me to congratulate you.”
“Why’s that?”
“This killer is obviously clever. You’ll need all the clues you can get.”
“I don’t think he’s that smart. In fact, I think he’s pretty stupid.”
“Oh, really?”
“He thinks he’s a lot smarter than he is. Where I come from, that’s called arrogance. And anyone that arrogant is pretty stupid.”
The man attempted to smile, but the result was a grimace, as though the muscles of his face didn’t work properly. “What if he’s as smart as he thinks he is?”
“I got news for you. No perp is as smart as he thinks he is.”
The man’s grimace broadened. The effect was grotesque, like a death mask. “There’s always a first time, Detective.”
Butts suddenly had the idea of snapping a picture of him with his cell phone. But the man must have read his mind—by the time Butts dug the phone out of his jacket, he had slipped around the corner. Butts nodded to McKinney, the plainclothes officer who had been leaning against the wall pretending to be absorbed in a conversation on his cell phone.
McKinney nodded back and followed The Professor.
C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
“
W
here the hell have you been?” Butts barked at
Lee when he emerged from the lecture hall.
“Trying to escape the usual well-wishers and hangers-on. I did my best to dodge them, but Lucille Geffers came over and wanted to chat. I got away as soon as I could. So,” he said, looking around, “did you get anything from him?”
“He’s our guy.”
Butts proceeded to recap the conversation, speaking in a low voice in case anyone might be eavesdropping. But the hall traffic had thinned out to the occasional backpack-toting student preoccupied with the approaching Christmas holidays, and no one was paying attention to them.
“If you do another lecture, you think he’ll come to that?” he asked Lee.
“He might. It would be a risk, but he enjoys risk.”
“I put a tail on him,” Butts said.
“I suspect he’ll be very good at shaking anyone following him.”
“McKinney’s a good man
.
”
“It’s worth a try.”
Butts shook his head. “I actually tried to get him to take a swing at me, for Christ’s sake, so I could arrest him for assaulting an officer.”
“He’s too smart to fall for that.”
“No kiddin’, Doc. Look, I’m gonna go down and book an appointment with a sketch artist, get this guy’s mug on paper, at least. Then we can circulate it within the department so our guys can be on the lookout for him.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Did you get a good look at his face?” Butts asked as they took the stairs down to the first floor.
“I’m a little nearsighted, and the back row was kind of far away.”
“That’s some scary looking scar he’s got,” Butts remarked as they joined the throng of students and professors headed for the exit.
“A scar, huh? That should help identify him. Unless. . .”
“What?”
“There’s a chance the scar is actually part of a disguise.”
A couple of students turned around to look at them. Lee put a finger to his mouth and exchanged a glance with the detective.
“You mean he might have faked it, to mislead us?” Butts whispered.
Lee didn’t answer until they were out of the building, surrounded by the ambient noise of Tenth Avenue. A swath of yellow taxis rattled uptown, their suspensions clattering over the potholes, the sound blending with the chatter of pedestrians and the click of leather heels on concrete. Lee pulled Butts over to the side of the building.
“It’s such an obvious identifying feature. Why would he engage in a long conversation with you and let you get a good look at him, unless what you were seeing was really an illusion?”
“So I’ll have every cop out there lookin’ for a guy with a scar—”
“And he could slip through the net because he hasn’t got one.”
Butts gazed at the pocket park across the avenue, where a man was selling Christmas trees. They were lined up in front of the park’s chain-link fence, a miniature forest of evergreen. “Christ. I don’t know what to tell the sketch artist now.”
“Why don’t you start by describing him as well as you can? You can add the scar later. It might be real, you know—he certainly is scarred psychologically.”
“So it could be real.”
“It might be. He is deeply damaged, and it could be physical as well as emotional. Sorry I can’t be more definite.”
“Whaddya gonna do, Doc? We all got our cross to bear,” Butts said, thrusting his arm out to snare a taxi. “That’s what the wife says, though I gotta say, I think some crosses are a hell of a lot heavier than others.”
“You can say that again,” Lee agreed as a cab screeched to a halt in front of them, brakes squealing.
“What’s goin’ on with that forensic anthropologist of yours?” Butts asked after giving the driver the address for the precinct. “Haven’t seen her for a while. What’s her name—Kathy?”
“Right, Kathy Azarian. We’re kind of... taking some time off.” Lee looked out the window of the cab as it sped past an Italian restaurant. The facade had been painted pumpkin orange.
Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.
He wondered what she was doing with him. The thought stung like acid.
“That’s too bad,” said Butts. “I like her.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if we’re really right for each other,” Lee said.
“Why don’t you make a list?” Butts suggested, fishing a sandwich out of his pocket. Lee was dismayed to see that it appeared to be egg salad.
“A list?” he said.
“Pros and cons—good things and bad things about each of ’ em.”
“That sounds kind of... clinical.”
Butts settled back in his seat and unwrapped the sandwich. “It worked for me. When I met my Muriel, I was datin’ another girl, see? I liked ’em both, but I knew I had to make up my mind. So I made a list. I put what I liked about them each on one side and what I didn’t on the other.”
“What happened?”
“I broke up with the other girl.” He took a large bite of his sandwich. “ ’Course, I got in trouble later.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Muriel found the list, and she wasn’t too thrilled. I tried to explain that she won, so she should be happy about it, but that didn’t help much.”
“But she married you.”
Butts grinned. “How ’bout that? I got lucky in the end.”
“Did you manage to convince her that the list was a good thing?”
“Hell, no. Listen, when you see Kathy, whatever you do, don’t mention that damn list, okay?”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?” he said, wiping off a stray chunk of egg salad from his mouth.
“Cross my heart, hope to—”
“Don’t say that. I don’t like people sayin’ that.”
“I forgot you were superstitious.”
“Nothin’ to do with superstition—I just don’t like hearin’ people say that, okay?”
“All right.”
Cross my heart, hope to die.
C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-ONE
F
iona sent Kylie into the city as promised on Friday, and Lee took her to her favorite restaurant, the Gothic-themed Jekyll & Hyde Club on Sixth Avenue. An actor dressed as a mad scientist escorted them past the gargoyles and skeletons to a table in a corner next to some French tourists.
The air was tight between them. Kylie seemed indifferent to everything, with none of her usual excitement when they visited Jekyll & Hyde. Instead of watching the waiters dressed as macabre characters prowling among the tables, she twisted a strand of blond hair idly between her fingers, a bored expression on her face. She then picked up her fork and swirled her vegetables into a whirlpool on the plate, concentric circles of green and red.
Like Christmas lights.
It was Christmas almost six years ago that her mother disappeared; Lee wondered if Kylie knew that. He wasn’t sure how much Fiona or George had told her. Distressing information was guarded closely in his family. The avoidance of conflict made it that much more unsettling when something bad did happen. In spite of his training and knowledge, he had reacted to Laura’s disappearance by plunging into a deep well of despair.
He looked at his niece. Kylie dangled her fork between thumb and forefinger, idly gazing at the patterns she was making on her plate. Lee took a deep breath and placed a hand on her arm. She looked up at him with a surprised expression that quickly hardened into indifference. It tore his heart to think what that emotional control cost her. She was learning at the hand of the master, and he felt it was his job to make sure she knew there were other options. Fiona Campbell had lived her life skimming across emotional surfaces like a dragonfly on a pond, avoiding the anguish of loss through sheer willpower.
“Kylie,” he said, “is everything okay with you?”
She stared back down at her plate. “Sure.” It was clear she wasn’t trying to convince him.
“Is there anything bothering you?”
Her eyes still on the plate, she said, “Why do you ask?”
“I just thought you might want someone to talk to,” he said lamely.
“What has she told you?” Kylie asked, her mouth sullen. The expression was so like Laura, he was caught off guard.
“Who—Fiona?”
She rolled her eyes. “
Duh.
”
“Nothing,” he lied.
“Get real,” she shot back. “She told you, didn’t she?”
“She mentioned—”
“That I’ve been cutting.” Her voice was hard, flat.
“Yeah,” he said. “So have you?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you have.”
“I tried it once,” she said. “I saw one of the older kids at school doing it.”
“But why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Because it looked cool. Because she said it made her feel better. Because I wanted to see what it felt like.”
“And what did it feel like?”
The line between her eyebrows deepened, and she bit her lip. “It made me feel better.”
“God, Kylie.”
“Are you angry at me?” Her defensive manner softened, and she sounded like a little girl again.
“No, I’m not angry. I’m just puzzled—and sad.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“That’s not the point. The question is why you did it in the first place.”
“I
told
you,” she said, on the verge of tears. “Because I wanted—”
“Because you wanted to feel better.”
He looked across the room at a table of children giggling and pointing at a talking skeleton. The statue’s bones clattered as its jaw rattled on, the grinning mouth seeming to mock the living from beyond the grave. He couldn’t hear what it was saying, but he supposed there was an actor in a control room somewhere doing the voice. The talking heads of creatures and portraits on the walls often made personal remarks about the customers, so there were probably closed-circuit cameras everywhere.
The thought sent a shiver through him—being spied upon was too much like his experience with his mysterious caller. He was being stalked by a twisted voyeur, and in a way these children were too—except they were enjoying it. They were about Kylie’s age and were celebrating a birthday. A beleaguered and exhausted-looking young woman—their chaperone?—stared off into space, an empty piña colada in front of her. He looked back at Kylie, who was gazing up at him with a hungry expression. Hungry for what, he wondered—understanding, knowledge, comfort?
“Kylie,” he said, “I want you to know something.”
“What?” she asked, her lower lip beginning to tremble.
“Your mom may not be coming back.”
“I know.” Her voice was soft.
“You do?”
“Grandmother likes to pretend she’s coming back, and I pretend to believe her. It makes her feel better.”
“But—”
“I know it’s not true. She loved me, and if she were alive, she would have come back by now. I know that. So she must be dead.”
He tried to think of something comforting to say, but all he could say was, “God, Kylie.”
“It’s okay, Uncle Lee. Grandmother thinks I believe she’s still alive. Don’t tell her I told you.”
This was so
wrong
, the child taking care of the adult, he thought. No wonder she was cutting herself. He had never suspected that Kylie felt as he did—that Laura was never coming back. His heart ached for the child, for the delicate deception she had spun out for her grandmother’s sake. How long had she suspected the truth?
“Is that—is that why you’re cutting yourself?” he stammered.
“I don’t know. All I know is that it did make me feel better.”
“Look, Kylie, if you ever need to talk to someone, I mean, about the truth—”
“I know, Uncle Lee—I can talk to you,” she said, but he sensed she was just humoring him. He felt her receding from him, traveling down the same dark tunnel he had been desperately trying to claw his way out of. But the tunnels were not connected; they as were separate as if they existed in different universes. Like him and Kathy Azarian . . . Right now, the only person he really felt connected to was the Alleyway Strangler. But was it enough to find him before someone else died?