Chapter Ninety-Five
Interstate 87
December 3, 2.20 p.m.
In the ride down from the Catskills, Detective Harper sat one side of Marty Fox with Special Agent Baines on the other. They had to be careful with Marty. He was a definite flake and they needed him to talk.
Harper shuffled in his seat and looked across. ‘I need to know all about the killer, Marty. Tell me what he’s like.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Marty, scared and confused.
‘Just try, goddammit. We know he was being treated by you, so everything’s gotta come from you, Marty. You’re the only guy we’ve got who knows him well.’
‘Okay.’ Marty took a deep breath, tried to compose himself. ‘He’s got two personalities, as far as I can see. A guy called Nick who’s married and frightened, and the devil, who he calls Sebastian. He never seems to know when the devil’s coming. Most of my meetings were with Nick.’
‘Did you meet Sebastian?’ asked Harper.
‘Yeah, momentarily. He’s the face of terror. Quite rational, quite determined. Demented. Evil. Slow and fierce. I don’t know if it’s a game or real.’
‘What else did you find out?’ said Harper.
‘He told a story about a girl from way back.’
‘So what happened?’ said Harper, eager to get some hold on Sebastian’s motive.
‘It was a girl called Chloe Mestella,’ Marty said. ‘She was murdered in ’82. Horrific murder. She was fifteen. The killer found his way into her bedroom at night on Valentine’s Day and cut her to pieces. I looked it up. It’s a real case. There was a murdered girl.’
‘Chloe Mestella?’ said Harper. He looked at Baines. ‘You know anything?’
‘Not a thing,’ said Baines. ‘We got to find out a little more detail. Talk more, Marty. We need everything.’
Harper looked across expectantly. He had thought a lot about Denise since she’d been taken. He kept thinking of her face. The thought of her pain burrowed inside him. It felt like he was guilty of her murder or something worse. And sometimes it broke through and he imagined her pain. But now they had something to follow. ‘Speak, Marty,’ he urged.
‘Chloe Mestella. This guy, Nick, loved her. I don’t know what the hell happened.’
‘Is that it?’
‘She got killed somehow. I don’t know who did it.’
‘That’s good, Marty, just keep it coming.’
Harper stared across at Baines. They were both thinking the same thing. If this was true, then Sebastian might have killed Chloe Mestella. Someone needed to get out to West Virginia fast and see if they might just have found Sebastian’s first kill.