Blue Team
November 22, 3.00 p.m.
Harper went direct from Madison Avenue to Captain Lafayette. He pushed open the glass door and stood there in the doorway.
‘I can see that look on your face, Harper. What is it?’
Harper sat down on the one chair facing the desk and looked across at Lafayette. ‘We think he’s going to kill again. If he’s working a two-day cycle, then it’s going to be today. We can’t just sit on our hands.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘I want you to throw every officer you can on to the Upper East Side. I want to saturate the place. I want to see uniforms on every street corner. I want to make it look like there isn’t a square inch over there that we’re not watching.’
‘Shit, Harper, that’s a big ask. Overtime city. How we going to sell that?’
‘Tell City Hall that it’s got two benefits. The first is that we look like we’re doing something and it’ll give people a little peace of mind. The second is, there’s a chance it will spook him and put him off his stride. It might just save someone’s life.’
Lafayette picked up the phone. ‘OK. Let me see what I can do.’
The new information about the scarf had caused a surge of optimism and activity at Blue Team. The two federal agents, Shelton and Spencer, had already been painstakingly piecing together the movements of the women, Mary-Jane, Grace, Amy, Jessica and Elizabeth, in the last months of their lives. Using the information gathered by the team regarding cell phones and credit cards, they were able to plot an intricate and detailed picture of the women’s movements.
From the victims’ bank details and phone records alone, they could create a pretty good idea of what they were doing on any one day. There were garage receipts showing when they parked, cafe, shop and restaurant receipts showing where they’d been, and phone records showing who they had called. Putting it all together, along with statements from their friends and families, the Feds produced a document that showed their movements at almost every hour of their last two months.
Harper gathered Blue Team together to listen to the special agents’ report. Despite the recent developments, it was still sombre in the windowless investigation room and the ominous blue board with the stark and chilling pictures of the dead sat as a reminder of the need to break through.
They listened intently to the geographical profile of the victims’ movements. Spencer and Shelton stood up front and talked through their findings in a slow, methodical fashion, showing such impressive attention to detail that Blue Team was ready to give them a standing ovation.
As they concluded, Asa Shelton moved to the front spot. ‘Gentlemen, the point of all our investigation is this. We now have a geo-profile of the victims. We know that your killer was stalking them in the weeks before they died. We know, for instance, that the killer watched Elizabeth Seale buy a Vivienne Laurec scarf and then purchased an identical one which he used to decorate her dead body. We know that he watched her go into the Fullerton Lounge on at least one occasion because he knew where she was going to sit and placed himself right beside her.
‘What we have here, therefore, is not only their movements, but, somewhere, the movements of the killer. The question we have to ask ourselves is this: what is the pattern here? Where is he most at home stalking?’
Asa clicked the small control in his hand and the next slide flew in. It was a close-up of Madison Avenue. ‘These spots, highlighted in red, are the intersections of movement of three of the five women. A killer like the American Devil will probably have different phases. In the trolling phase, the killer will visit places he is likely to see victims to his taste. Trolling is a fishing term: the killer is sitting in his boat with the net out, seeing what comes his way. Now, while it’s possible that a killer will come across a victim in a place that they don’t usually frequent, it’s more likely that he’ll spot them in a place they and he go to repeatedly. You all follow? If we plotted your geo-profile, about ninety-five per cent of your movements within a set period would be repetitions. It’s likely, therefore, that the trolling spot is also the place where he stalks. Now, even if, as Detective Harper suggests, our killer knew victims one through three, it makes no difference. We want to know where he stalks so we can set a trap. Our best bet, therefore, is public locations that these women visited frequently. So, for Amy Lloyd-Gardner, we’ve got Madison Avenue. She was a shopper through and through. Jessica Pascal went to two places most frequently, the Baptist church and the campus at Columbia University, but she walked home via Madison Avenue. We’d suggest the Baptist church is not a good trolling area, although he certainly stalked her there, so with her we red-spot Columbia and Madison. Elizabeth Seale has the widest geo-profile. She’s all over the city, but she was, on three occasions, on Madison Avenue. Her most frequent spot, though, was the airport, LaGuardia. Grace was at LaGuardia four times and also at a shop on Park Avenue, just around the corner from Madison. Even Mary-Jane travelled via LaGuardia once. See the two red spots? Madison and LaGuardia. It may be, gentlemen, that this is a map of your killer ’s trolling and stalking zones.’
He continued. ‘We also came up with something interesting. The Triborough Bridge toll road that runs through Ward’s Island connects in the north to the Major Deegan Freeway, which takes you up to the Bronx, and in the south to Grand Central Parkway, which takes you direct to LaGuardia. The east side of Manhattan is only a few minutes’ ride. That’s the killer ’s stretch of road.’
‘That’s interesting, guys. That’s great work,’ said Harper. ‘Did you find any place they might have met the same employees? We’re guessing that the first three knew him through his work. Is there anything to connect them?’
‘Not a single place. Every victim in the last month visited numerous clothes stores, coffee shops, hairdressers and beauticians, but we know which stores they went into and there’s no crossover at all. Unless the killer himself moves between these stores.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘Well, we can look into it, Detective, but it’ll take a little time.’
‘Do that. That’s good. So what do we do with this information?’
‘Given our two points of fixed information, the proximity to his primary route and the crossover of victims, I’d suggest we set up observation posts at Madison Avenue and LaGuardia.’
‘Stakeout?’ said Kasper. ‘In New York City? At LaGuardia Airport? In Madison Avenue on Thanksgiving?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How the fuck are we going to find a nondescript man like that? He’s clever; we don’t know if he’s going to show. It’ll be like searching for a snake in a snakepit.’
‘Any action we take that might find this killer is likely to be high-risk, labour-intensive and painstaking,’ said Harper. ‘I think we’ve got to do it.’
It felt like something. Harper went straight back up to see Captain Lafayette. Lafayette smiled. ‘They went for it, Harper. And they want you to get out there and brief the press. They won’t saturate the area, but they’ve given us an extra forty patrolmen, so it’s going to feel different.’
‘That’s great, Captain. Let’s hope it works, but I need you to make another call.’
‘Shit, Harper, what now?’
‘We got his stalking areas outlined and we want to put up a full surveillance operation on the two red dots on the map — Madison and LaGuardia.’
Lafayette stared across, trying to judge the seriousness of Harper’s suggestion, but Harper didn’t blink. ‘Jesus. Set it up, Harper. But set it up with the manpower you’ve got. I’m not asking for more men. We’ve got to have something to show before we call in another favour.’
‘That’s fine. We’ve got the capacity. I’ll go ahead.’
Harper left Lafayette’s office feeling good. He looked at his watch. Time was running short and putting together an operation like this would take at least twenty-four hours. He had a hell of a lot of work to do. He just hoped to God that something would interrupt the killer’s cycle in time.