March 14, 10.18 a.m.
Harper slept three hours then walked back to the station house, his head full of dark images. The news media had just picked up the story and the panic and rage were building.
There were no reporters outside the precinct and the investigation room was nearly empty. It would take Forensics another day to get anything from the Auxiliary Truck, but Harper already knew that there would be nothing. The killer was too good, and the purpose of the attack was unmistakable – it wasn’t just to kill, it was to prove his superiority to the police.
Denise Levene sat in the circle of light from a low desk lamp in the corner of the room. She looked asleep. Harper moved across, his feet making no sound on the old carpet. Denise turned quickly as he approached. ‘Tom! Are you okay?’
‘I’ve never seen anything as bad as what I saw in that truck, Denise. We’ve got to find this guy. He’s escalating beyond anything I could’ve imagined. Five kids gassed in a police van.’ Harper threw himself into a seat. ‘Anything coming together here?’
‘I’ve got nothing new. We’ve been working all night.’
‘No leads on Lucy?’
‘We haven’t found anything. He’s cleaned all traces.’ Denise stared up at Harper. ‘It’s always darkest just before dawn,’ she said.
Harper smiled in response and stared down at the book that Denise was looking at. ‘What is it? Your high-school scrapbook?’
‘It’s my casebook. I keep a close eye on the Abby case. I keep every detail, every article.’
‘You really feel for her, don’t you?’
‘Sure, don’t we all?’
Harper picked up the casebook. He held it as he crossed to the coffee pot and poured out a fresh cup of coffee. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘Looking back over the life of a case.’ Harper sat and started to flick through the images. He saw outrage, hope, despair, page after page. The turns and dead ends of a fruitless investigation. At the end, the presumption of death.
‘They look alike, don’t they?’ said Harper, staring at a picture of Abby Goldenberg smiling in a high-school shot and the photos of the murder victims on the wall.
Denise stood up and stretched. ‘Yeah. There’s definitely a type he goes for. No question.’
‘No, I mean Abby and Lucy.’
‘They do,’ said Denise.
‘I don’t understand how Lucy could be a target,’ said Harper.
‘Why?’
‘She’s not Jewish, is she? He must’ve been going for Capske, but then why come back for Lucy?’
‘Because she saw something the night he was taken, something that would lead us to him.’
‘Yes. I thought of that,’ said Harper, ‘but if she was only taken because of some accident, then it’s damn strange that she’s a dead ringer for Abby. I don’t get how this fits together.’
‘I don’t get it either, but Lucy had something he wanted to keep from us.’
‘Another thing, if we’re working on the assumption that the killer is Heming, then why does it matter if Lucy saw him? It makes no sense. We know it’s Heming, don’t we?’
‘No, but he’s all we’ve got.’
‘He’s smart, right? Smart enough to find a police safe house and kidnap two kids, smart enough to leave no evidence. You met Lucy. She’s not a difficult target. She seemed kind of lost in her own head. Why did he feel the need to take her?’
‘Could be part of the escalation,’ said Denise. ‘He’s not thinking straight.’
‘You read about Heming and his wife. She went off with a Jew. You don’t think that’s what’s happened here, do you? Lucy was going out with Heming, maybe after the marriage broke up. Maybe lightning struck twice for him. She was dating him and then left him for a Jewish boy.’
‘Could be,’ said Denise. ‘But they don’t seem to be a good match.’
‘No, and again, I can understand him wanting to punish her, if that’s his psychosis, but why take the hard drive and the diaries?’
Harper flicked through Denise’s casebook and stopped at a picture of Abby standing next to some boyfriend from her past. He turned to Denise. ‘Our killer knows the children can ID him, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So he’s confident he’s got alibis and he’s confident that there’s no physical evidence to link himself to the crime. We didn’t even get a strand of hair from the Becky Glass murder. He didn’t rape her either, even though it looks like he wanted to. Perhaps he’s afraid of leaving his DNA. I mean, maybe he’s on file so he’s got to keep the scenes clean. He certainly knows how to clean a crime scene. If it was Heming, the children could ID him from a photograph.’
‘If the psych team allowed us.’
‘He doesn’t know that.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘The only thing that can put our killer at the scene is the children. And the only other person who is linked to the case and to him is Lucy Steller. Fuck!’
‘What?’
‘He killed Capske out of spite, because he was jealous, because he was in love with Lucy Steller. He let himself make that mistake. That’s why he called the press. He knew he had to try to put us off the scent. The other kills are random, perhaps linked to Section 88 and hate attacks, but David Capske was never attacked by Section 88. David isn’t his victim type. David was an error, a personal vendetta. That’s why he’s taken Lucy. Our killer knew her. And she knew him.’
‘Where are you going with this?’ said Denise.
Harper stood up and took his coat. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense. Lucy is the key to his identity. Lucy is personal. And that means you need to work harder than ever to find out who she went out with.’
‘Okay, we can do it,’ said Denise.
‘It also means something else,’ said Harper. ‘It means that we’ve been searching for the wrong man.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s not Martin Heming. It makes no sense to take Lucy or to try to take the children if the killer is Heming. Our killer’s identity is locked up in those three, but Sturbe is not Heming.’
‘The profile never matched,’ said Denise. ‘We’ve been chasing the wrong guy.’