Blue Team MIR
November 20, 10.30 p.m.
Down at Blue Team, the day turned into evening and everyone was waiting. Williamson had got the team to set up the big blue boards in the basement room. They had three photographs each of Mary-Jane, Grace Frazer and Amy Lloyd-Gardner, and now Jessica Pascal’s face stared out innocently alongside the others. Williamson wanted no mistakes. He wanted to hurt this guy.
Tom Harper and Eddie Kasper walked into the basement. The other detectives of Blue Team were all sitting around facing Nate Williamson, who was talking to them in low tones.
They’d been talking about the lead detective’s performance live on air. Everyone agreed that he’d done a good job. Williamson wasn’t happy with it, but that was his character. He was at least pleased that he’d fronted it. He’d insisted, he told his guys, even though Harper had offered to do it himself.
The team went quiet as Harper approached. Everyone was hoping this would work, but they all knew it was a hell of a long shot. Harper was looking tired and sat on the desk at the front. He nodded to the guys and wiped his nose with his forefinger. ‘That was a great job out there, Nate. If he’s listening, then that’s gotta sting.’
‘Yeah, well, I did what I said I would. Let’s just hope it pays off — administration want every report on these murders to go in triplicate right up to the deputy commissioner, so if this fucks up, then everyone in the fucking city knows it. How about that?’
‘High stakes,’ said Harper, ‘but I hope it pays off for you.’
‘He can only do two things, call or not call. That’s evens. This is a good bet. I’d back it myself, but I’m saving up for retirement.’
Harper felt a smile cross his lips. It was good to hear someone being less than cynical, a rare thing at Homicide.
Williamson moved off to the coffee pot at the back of the basement room, then came back with a steaming cup. He turned to the rest of Blue Team. ‘Let’s focus on our killer. How we doing out there?’
‘Still nothing on ViCAP,’ said Kasper. ‘I’ve been trying to get the FBI profile coordinator to give us something concrete, but they’re still reluctant to make a judgement.’
Lol Edwards chimed in from the soft seats at the back of the room. ‘My view, for what it’s worth, is that he’s from out of state.’
‘Opinions are fine, Lol, but we need evidence. Nothing else? What’s the autopsy report looking like, Garcia?’
‘Everyone’s got a copy. Details worthy of note are as follows: the cause of death in the case of Jessica Pascal was asphyxiation. Plastic bag was found at the scene. The wounds mostly occurred before death. The victim had recently had sexual intercourse. Traces of semen on the body. Impossible to tell whether it was rape or they had sex and then the killer went ape. Get this — there were sixty-four separate shallow knife wounds.’
Lol Edwards sniffed for attention. ‘ME called, she overlooked a bite mark on the left buttock. Pretty deep, too. We’ve got another teeth print. It’s the same mouth. And the lip print matches as much as they can tell.’
‘How did he get in?’
‘We’ve got sightings of Jessica in Joe’s Bar with a grey-haired man in his late thirties. We’ve also got an ID of the same guy at the girl’s Baptist church. We’re working them into sketches.’
‘What do you say, Tom? What are we looking at?’ said Eddie.
‘Well, don’t let the fake profile fool you. This is an aggressive sexual predator. Organized and ruthless. He enjoys hurting and humiliating. There’s a religious element that I don’t understand yet but he already likes to communicate. He left quotations with Amy and Jessica. The quotations are both poets, Rilke and John Milton. I’ve been up to Columbia University so we’ve got a little background. They were both visionary poets. Milton was also blind. Rilke was a radical. God knows what he’s getting at.’
‘Maybe he just likes poetry,’ said Eddie. ‘You know, hobbies — walking, poetry, serial killing.’
The guys laughed as Williamson edged away from the circle with his coffee and turned to Rick Swanson. ‘How about the progress on Amy, our angel?’
‘We got a hit on the nail art. There’s a salon up in Harlem. Quite a low rent affair, not the kind of place a banker’s wife would be in, except, in nail art circles, it’s got Harlem kudos. Anyway, they claim the designs are theirs, but they don’t recognize her photo. So we’re still digging. They say that sometimes these high society girls get their maids to come in for designs, get a one-off and then repeat them themselves in their more upmarket beauticians.’
‘So, what we can conclude is that we got nothing,’ said Mark Garcia. ‘You want me to do the press release? A guy goes out on a date with a church-going virgin, doesn’t get his way so he kills the poor kid.’
‘Garcia, fucking button it,’ said Eddie.
‘Fuck you! That’s all we got.’
The captain had entered the room during their intense conversation. No one had noticed him, but he was watching them all closely. He had some news.
‘Williamson, we had a caller wanting to speak to you.’ The room stopped dead.
Williamson stood up. ‘Was it our guy?’
‘He said he’s got a handful of cherry blossom that he wants to shove up your ass.’
There was a murmur of laughter throughout the room but the captain wasn’t smiling at all. The room went still for a moment.
‘He hung up real quick,’ said Lafayette. ‘He said he was busy, but he’d call back when he had a moment.’
‘Was it him?’ said Harper.
‘He said he’d cut Jessica sixty-four times. He said the career girl murderer only managed sixty-three. He wanted to see if he could go one better.’
‘No one knew that detail,’ said Harper. ‘It’s got to be him.’