American Devil

Tom Harper was unshaved and smelled like he looked. He hadn’t washed since the arrest and didn’t intend to. He’d worked until midnight interrogating the suspect, reviewing the CCTV images, putting together the team report and briefing his senior and executive officers. He finally laid his head down on the grey blanket of the precinct bunk at 2 a.m. and slept in his clothes for two hours. He woke suddenly at four with a terrible premonition that the killer had escaped him and disappeared down the subway tunnel, laughing like a madman in a film.

He sat up on the edge of the bunk. His head ached and his big hands were still stinging. He looked down at the deep cuts running across both palms from the struggle in the subway and tried to close his fists, but the wounds had started to crack open. He could hear it now - the footsteps in the dark, his own heavy breathing. His hands were still dark with dust and soot. He could even smell the tunnel fumes in his hair and see the arch of light ahead and the silhouette of the killer moving towards it. He sighed long and hard. In the bunk room, four other officers lay flat out, snoring and stinking. Tom pushed himself to his feet and dragged his body towards the coffee pot.

There was no one around in the large investigation room. It glowed pale and ghostly with pre-dawn light. Tom’s eyes scanned the five blue boards with their photographs of pointless slaughter. There wouldn’t be another. Thank God for that. He felt the emotion rising from his thoughts and breathed in quickly. Hundreds of officers had slugged through these past days, working overtime and trying to do something about these killings in their muted, sarcastic, smart-assed but none the less caring way - enough to go home empty, with no energy or emotion for their own lives and families. He nodded his thanks and respect to the empty room. They’d nailed the bastard and now he was sitting in a cell some fifty feet below him, surrounded by cold steel and concrete.

In his right hand, Harper picked up the previous day’s New York Daily Echo. The headline was ‘Serial Killer Turns Cop Killer’. Harper had been right. Erin Nash had been told about the Williamson murder by someone on the team. One day he’d find out who it was and that person would be very sorry. Underneath the headline, there was a composite image of the five female victims with Detective Williamson in the middle, looking more like the killer than one of his victims. Erin Nash didn’t need to try to make this sensational; the grainy print of the photographs was enough of a headline - it gave the faces the aura of tragedy.

Tom walked up to his profile board. Denise Levene had constructed her vision of the killer. He read slowly, sipping scalding coffee slowly over his lips so it burned the tip of his tongue. She’d written seven single traits: High school educated, White, Mid-thirties, Self-controlled, Police/military background, Living with someone, Employed in sales.

Tom took up a blue marker pen and circled two words: White, Thirties. He looked at the rest and crossed a line through the other five traits. It was hard to get a profile right when the killer was as deranged as someone like Winston Carlisle. Even though Denise had been so sure and he’d been convinced himself, it wasn’t a perfect science. It was all guesswork really and profiles were often hit and miss. He took a cloth and scrubbed the profile off the board. No need for recriminations: they had their man.

He walked down the corridor, past the thick steel doors painted in cream enamel, as if this touch of softness could disguise the need to incarcerate untamed human evil. He stood outside the cell. His heart was beating hard in his chest. He read the board. Carlisle, W. He pulled back the bolt, which clinked loudly in the quiet of the cell. He lowered the flap. He felt like a man in a fairground who’d paid to see a monster. He put his eyes to the gap and stared in at the figure sitting on a bunk, staring silently at the floor. This was the Devil - this grey-haired snivelling piece of humanity was the American Devil, but it just didn’t feel right.

Captain Lafayette was sitting in the investigation room. The rest of Blue Team were struggling in from the bunkroom. Lafayette looked deadly serious. He had been woken himself forty minutes earlier when the first copy hit the street. The mayor’s office had been in touch directly. Their words were to the point - ‘What the fuck is happening?’

The men looked at each other in the dark room. Lafayette looked at his men. All of them looked tired. Well, they were going to feel a lot worse in a minute or two. Lafayette threw down a copy of the New York Daily Echo.

AMERICAN DEVIL STILL AT LARGE

PSYCHO SLAUGHTERS BLONDE HEIRESS AS COPS CLAIM CAPTURE

Manhattan’s notoriously sadistic pattern killer, the ‘American Devil’, struck again on the Upper East Side yesterday evening as cops were interviewing the man they believed to be the killer, a source said.

The stripped and mutilated remains of the rubber heiress, Katrina Hunyardi, 23, were found in her apartment an hour after she had been released by the NYPD. She had been raped and stabbed repeatedly with a thin-bladed knife.

The American Devil, who poses his dead victims in macabre and artistic ways, again left his horrifying signature. Kitty Hunyardi was posed like an angel and covered with cherry blossom. As with all his previous kills, the Devil took a trophy - this time, he removed the victim’s hands.

The NYPD yesterday were confident that they had the killer behind bars. So confident, in fact, that only hours after being identified as a target for the killer, Kitty Hunyardi was left without police protection. That mistake cost her life.

Lafayette stared at the team. ‘What the fuck’s going on? I thought we had Katrina Hunyardi? She was in the fucking station yesterday afternoon. Two cops took her home. She ID’d Winston Carlisle. What’s going on?’

Lafayette sat down. He was looking close to a coronary. ‘Nothing. No reports, no homicides, but we’ve been calling Kitty and there’s no reply. We’re sending someone over now. Jesus. If something’s happened to her!’

The previous afternoon, Kitty Hunyardi had spent three hours at the precinct while her story was checked and she identified Winston Carlisle in a line-up as the man in the subway. Two officers took her back to her building. She didn’t want to spend any longer than she had to in the company of cops and dismissed them at the door. The whole dirty business was something she wanted to erase from her brain, including the acrid coffee breath that all cops seemed to have.

Inside her apartment Kitty crouched down under the hot stream of the shower and cried. It had been a hell of a couple of days. The worst she’d ever experienced. It was too much. She wanted to be strong and independent but she needed someone. It was hard, knowing a killer had been stalking you for weeks. That’s what the cops had said. That he tended to scope his victims and even take their clothes and shoes. The idea was terrifying. She felt violated and it dragged her out of the privilege and safety of her wealth and into a place she didn’t recognize.

Worse still, the killer had got close enough to her to kill her. He could have put a knife into her right there in the street. He had grabbed her crotch. All her life, she’d been safe and protected. Now she remembered his hand on her, her fear. She felt sickness starting to rise in her stomach and ran to the lavatory. Her wet blond hair flopped over the white bowl of the toilet as she retched up her guts.

Kitty walked out of the bathroom feeling weak and tired. She had promised herself that she’d never ask for her father’s help. She’d made it a point of honour that she would be able to cope in her own apartment. She wouldn’t ask for his help now, either. She had to get through this alone. It was over. She just had to sleep. She lay down on her bed and closed her eyes, feeling a little calmer. She hugged herself. In truth, she wanted to be eight years old again, far away from the present, back in a time when everything was safe and secure and men didn’t grab you on the street. The line-up had been horrible, but there he was, that face, that disturbed face. That horrible, ragged, miserable face.

Sebastian was smiling. His plan had worked. He’d fooled the cops and now he was five steps away from girl number six. Winston had played his part like a professional. He’d get his fifteen minutes of fame, but the real fame would come to Sebastian. He was better than them all. In his hand he held the morning’s Daily Echo.

He shivered. He hated happiness. He had always hated it. Her arms and legs were splayed across the bed, enjoying the space. He wanted her now. Kitty Hunyardi. He took a seat and stared at her, his head tilted to one side. Nice lips, nice skin, nice low relaxed breathing.

These moments lived with him. They were the only moments of quiet he had ever known, the moments before his innocent women became his victims, when he felt a serene sense of power. He was a god now, looking down on his beautiful creations, blissfully unaware they were being watched. Blissfully unaware the devil had come to take away God’s gift.

He watched her eyes. He was waiting until she calmed, until reason returned. ‘I’ve just come to deliver the morning paper,’ he said. ‘But don’t scream. If you stay quiet, I’ll let you live. Do you understand?’

Kitty nodded. She didn’t understand anything at all. A newspaper was placed in front of her. The gloved hand slowly slipped from her mouth and the bedside light flicked on. ‘Read all about it,’ Sebastian said. ‘It’s not often we can see how we’re going to be remembered.’

Sebastian smiled as he watched her. His right hand moved to his pocket and pulled out a neat little surgical bone saw. It was only about six inches long. He snapped the handle into place as he looked down at Kitty’s shaking hands. He loved her. He always had. She had such beautiful hands.