The Night Caller (26 page)

Coop didn’t insult him by asking if cops were assigned to stand by and get Deni’s statement if and when she regained consciousness and could speak.

As everyone other than the crime photographer and lab techs, who’d been working mostly in the bathroom and bedroom, filed from the apartment, Billard said, “I notified the FBI, Coop. Fred Willingham. After this came down, I didn’t see that there was any choice.”

“That’s fine, Art. I’d have done the same.”

“Agent Willingham sounded excited when I told him about the fax.”

“Like fireworks after a home run,” Coop said.

After Billard parted from them down in the street, Coop and Dickerson walked toward a Starbucks in the next block. Coop knew it didn’t have to be this way. He could be standing in Deni’s bedroom giving his statement, or down in the building’s vestibule.

He decided he liked Dickerson. Liked his professional courtesy.

Maybe identified with him and envied him for the life he was living. The life Coop loved and hated and would never stop missing.

Two young girls, one of them standing on a chair, were winding strands of miniature Christmas lights around the supporting pillars at Starbucks. Dickerson and Coop went to a table in the back, where no one else was sitting and the tiny clear lights were already glowing.

The questions Dickerson asked were the ones Coop would have asked in his place. Amazing how smoothly a police interrogation went if both parties knew the rules, and the one being questioned had nothing to hide.

Then Dickerson drained the last of his espresso and handed Coop a folded sheet of paper. “This was found stuck to the bottom of the desk pad on Deni Green’s desk. What’s it mean to you, if anything?”

Coop looked at the list of names, all women, followed by dates and cities. Among the names were those of the women he and Deni had pegged as probable victims of the serial killer. The cities were where they had died, the dates were when.

Coop explained the list to Dickerson. “Deni was using her computer to trace other possible victims,” he continued. “My guess is that’s what the rest of these names represent. Her killer didn’t realize she’d printed it out, and he missed it or had to get out before conducting a thorough search.” Coop pulled a pen from his pocket. “You mind if I copy this?”

Dickerson gave his okay, and Coop copied the information onto a paper napkin.

He offered to pay for the coffee, and Dickerson accepted but left a tip before leaving Starbucks.

Coop sat for a while, sipping ice water and studying the women’s names on the list. All murder victims, he was sure, as the cities and dates opposite the names of known victims were those of their deaths.

Two things about the list struck Coop. Though there were three gaps of inactivity in the dates, generally the time between murders was decreasing. Typical of the increasing need and madness of a psychosexual serial killer. The other thing was the appearance of a particular date—August 28—three times. The three death dates immediately after the gaps of inactivity.

Coop decided he needed to learn more about that date.

Back in his warm, tiny apartment that had felt cozy but now seemed stifling, Coop called Alicia and gave her the news about Deni.

“My God!” Alicia said. “What happens to the book now?”

The words had obviously leapt from her lips before she could stop them; he didn’t like that reaction from her. Publishing must do things to people. Some people, anyway, who were playing out of their league for high stakes. Maybe police work wasn’t as callous and diminishing as he’d thought.

“And poor Deni! You say she’s in critical condition?”

“Critical,” Coop confirmed.

“This is awful! Do you think there’s a connection between what happened to her and what you two were working on?”

“I think so,” Coop said, “even though there’s no direct evidence pointing to it.”

“Cop’s intuition?”

“More than that. The thing about our killer is he reaches into his trick bag and leaves various clues meant to mislead. He’s apparently studied the literature on serial killers. It’s his different guises that protect him.”

“But Deni said he always left what she referred to as ‘his calling card.’ She said all serial killers do that.”

“This one does, too, but not enough to create much of a pattern.” He thought about the long hair fanned out around the victims’ heads. Only some of the victims. But Deni had been assaulted, and Theresa Dravic had been killed, hurriedly and perhaps with interruption. And of course Deni’s hair was short. Georgianna Mason’s hair was long, but wet and tangled from her involuntary bath of blood and tap water. Aside from Deni, the victims were all lying or reclining on their backs in relaxed positions, laid out with an undertaker’s care. But how many murder victims everywhere were found lying on their backs? Probably more than half, as they sought their final breaths and good-bye look at the world they were leaving. At least two of the victims—Marlee Clark and Ann Callahan—had red hair. Bette’s natural hair color had been auburn, maybe with streaks of red. Georgianna and Theresa Dravic he wasn’t sure about. Possibly a pattern there.

But there were the shoe prints with their distinctive crisscross pattern. And now there were the shoe prints from Seattle.

And of course, St. Augustine. Beginning with Bette, then Georgianna Mason and Theresa Dravic. The last three known victims, murdered closer together in time, more brutally. Deni hadn’t been mutilated and sexually violated, but Coop was sure that was a clever killer’s diversion or there simply hadn’t been time. Or maybe it was because Deni was attacked not out of psychosexual compulsion, but simply to stop her investigation and upcoming book. The plastic saints would work well in her book, Coop thought, the calling card she’d talked about. The killer was now more firmly in the tightening grip of compulsion, boasting of his gruesome work, taunting the police because he must, even though it increased the odds of him being caught.

“…Is Deni conscious, Coop?”

Alicia was talking.

“No,” Coop said, breaking out of his reverie. “The doctors aren’t sure she’ll regain consciousness.”

“From what you say, she might have seen her attacker.”

“It’s probable that she saw him. There was a brief struggle.”

“You always say
him,
as if you know the killer is a man.”

“Didn’t Deni tell you they usually are? Women don’t kill women that way, not unless there’s some motive other than violent sexual compulsion.”

“Like, say, a best-selling book?”

Coop was jolted. He actually held the phone away from him for a moment and stared at it, as if he were in a schlocky television scene. “What are you saying, Alicia?”

“Nothing, actually. I know I should be ashamed, but before this happened, I was…well, speculating.”

Say it,
Coop thought.
Come right out and say it.
“That Deni was the killer? Involved in a grisly plot of her own in order to write a true crime book?”

“Don’t think too poorly of me, Coop. I told you, it was only idle speculation. The dark side of my mind, I guess.”

“I think we can throw that kind of speculation out the window now.”

“Yes. Thank God for that, anyway.”

He was sure she didn’t mean it. Probably she was thinking that if Deni were the killer it might make a hell of a best-seller—written by another of her authors.

“How did you suppose she was going to end the book?”

“I did wonder about that,” Alicia said, after a pause.

Steam pipes clanked and rattled in the old, thick walls, reminding Coop of the cold outside. “Does Deni have any family that should be notified?” he asked.

“I’m sure she doesn’t. At least, no one she’d want to be notified. A stepfather she absolutely hated, and she told me her mother was dead and there were no siblings.”

Coop felt a pang of sadness for Deni. Almost the way he’d felt after Bette was gone forever. Deni wasn’t such a bad sort, really, only someone who carried baggage and deep pain from the past, like so many people. She was alive, but maybe as close to death as a person could get, and dying could be so damned lonely. “It seems somebody other than you and I should care about whether she lives or dies,” he said.

“I’ll phone her agent.”

“Fine. That’s something. Maybe he’ll know somebody to call.”

“There isn’t any point in visiting her if she isn’t conscious. Sometimes they don’t even let you near somebody in intensive care. You have to stay on the other side of a window. And you can’t even bring them flowers. They might contaminate the air.”

“I’ll drop by the hospital later on and check on her,” Coop said.

“God!” Alicia said. She sounded genuinely appalled. “We’re going to have to figure something out here. We need to have some editorial meetings, maybe hire another writer…. Well, you know. This is an unpredictable, tough business, Coop.”

“I’m getting the idea,” he said.

“I’ve got to get busy here. Will you do me a favor and keep me posted on Deni’s condition?”

He said that he would and hung up.

“Guess what I just learned!” he heard her call excitedly to someone just before the connection was broken.

Coop called Cara next at Mercantile Mutual. He told her Deni had been badly beaten and urged her to exercise special caution.

“I hope she pulls through,” Cara said immediately.

“I’m thinking of
your
safety.”

“And I’m thinking of yours, Coop. It seems obvious that if the killer saw Deni as a bigger threat to him than I am, he’d also see you that way.”

“Are you always so infuriatingly logical?”

“No,” she said. “You’d be the one to know that.” She paused a few beats. “I don’t want to lose you, lover. Not ever.”

“You won’t. We won’t lose each other.”

“Are you sure it was the killer who attacked Deni? I mean, he didn’t kill her.”

“He tried. Or maybe he was satisfied knowing he’d damaged her capacity to think clearly for the rest of her life. Or testify against him, if it came to that.”

“Is she hurt that badly, that she’s permanently brain damaged?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. Will you be extra careful? For you and for me?”

“I will, darling, if you promise the same.”

“I promise,” he lied. At least it felt like a lie, even though he meant it. The reply was so automatic. Part of the job. Though he was no longer a real cop.

As he was replacing the receiver after talking with Cara, he glanced down and saw that his hand was trembling. He realized his stomach was roiling, and he was suddenly very tired.

Coop knew it was the stress of the investigation, of his obsession to find Bette’s killer. Dr. Gregory was right in advising him to avoid stress, in pointing out the close relationship of stress and disease, partners in destruction. One consolation was that the killer must be feeling the same stress, or worse. Coming unraveled. Unless he was incredibly strong, he was coming unraveled.

The hiss and clank of the old steam radiator system was somehow soothing. Coop pushed himself up from where he was sitting and walked over to the sofa. He intended to lie down and relax, calmly think over recent events and what they might mean. But even as he was removing his shoes and arranging throw pillows for his head, he knew he was kidding himself.

He was asleep within minutes.

That afternoon, Billard called.

“There’s no change in Deni Green’s condition,” he said. “If she does survive and remember what happened, we should have an ID on whoever attacked her. The doctors at Mercy say she’s suffered massive blunt-object trauma to the head. Something like a phone book interrogation.”

Coop knew what Billard meant. In rougher times, cops would place a phone directory on top of a suspect’s head and beat on it with their nightsticks. The energy of the blows was transferred to the skull through the phone book, causing pain and massive damage, but leaving very little external evidence of a beating. Even if the suspect died, sometimes an ME or coroner in earlier years couldn’t or wouldn’t determine the exact cause of death.

“The other damage to Deni, contusions, even a broken finger, are relatively incidental,” Billard said. “It’s the injury to the head that’s life threatening.”

“Is her skull fractured?”

“No. But it might not be if a soft sap was used on her, or if something was used to transfer and radiate the shocks of the blows. The doctors are still trying to determine the extent of brain damage. You know how it works, Coop, it’s the brain bouncing around inside the skull that causes the real injuries. And CAT scans and MRIs show a lot of internal bleeding. They’ve drilled into her skull to relieve the pressure.”

“Christ!”

“If her attacker is the guy you’re looking for, he’s mixing up his techniques again.”

“That’s his game,” Coop said. “It was him. He got on to her because of that newspaper article, found out what she looked like and where she lived. He must have been scared away, or thought she was dead, or he would have killed her.”
And maybe he has killed her.

“I hope Deni got a good look at him, Coop. I hope she can describe him, maybe even ID him.”

“Has it ever been that easy, Art?”

“Never that I can recall,” Billard said. “And it probably won’t be this time, either.”

“There’s a new piece of information you should know, Art. The victim in Seattle, Georgianna Mason, who was killed less than a month ago. St. Augustine.”

“I know. I got the information when I called Marty Sanderson. He told me you’d asked about it.”

“I figured it had reached that point. Somebody had to make the connection.”

“Yeah. You did right. Same cheap plastic statuette, same slice to the vaginal tract to facilitate entry.”

Coop told him about the list of names found in Deni’s apartment. “One date appears more than any other on the list. August twenty-eighth mean anything to you, Art?”

“Sure does. I went to a Catholic school. Why am I not surprised?”

“So what’s August twenty-eighth?”

“It’s the Feast of St. Augustine. Celebrated all over the world.”

“I think our killer has a unique way of celebrating,” Coop said. He felt anger growing in him and fought it down.

“This fucking world!” Billard said.

Coop didn’t have to remind him it was the only world they had.

After assuring Coop that he’d keep him informed, Billard hung up.

It was too warm in the apartment now and Coop was sweating. He could feel the dampness of his shirt beneath his armpits, at the back of his collar. He’d lain too long in one place, so exhausted he hadn’t moved. For a moment he thought of opening a window; then he told himself that was the way to pneumonia.

He sat for a long time on the edge of the sofa, staring at the snow banked on the window ledges across the street. A scraggly gray pigeon that looked as if it might be freezing to death was perched on one and seemed to be staring forlornly back at him. A bleak scene for a bleak time.