part0022

We had stood for a long time, holding each other in that gruesome room, in that dark church. At some point I had pulled my cell from my pocket, and with Dehan clinging to me, I had called the inspector.

“John, what in the name of God!!!”

His voice had seemed very far away, compared to the soft touch of my wife’s hair on my cheek.

“It’s over,” I had said, softly, as much to Dehan as to the inspector.

A heavy silence, then, “What are you telling me?”

“Dehan is safe, sir…” I had had to stop then to fight back the tears. “Dehan is safe, Campbell is dead and Vargas is bound. Two of Vargas’s men are dead downstairs, and two more upstairs. You can send in your men, and the Feds. It’s over.”

I heard him whisper, “Dear God…” again just before I hung up.

Then Dehan looked up into my face. Her eyes were red and swollen and her cheeks were wet. I was about to laugh at her, until she gently wiped the tears from my face. Then I just shut up and held her until we heard the tramping of boots coming up the stairs.

The door burst open and the SWAT team swarmed in, pointing their weapons at men who were already dead and shouting, “Clear! ” at each other.

Close behind them came Inspector John Newman, looking pale and drawn, and with him were Agents Panayotes and Trevellian.

The three of them stopped to stare at us a moment. I met Panayotes’ eye and gave my head a small shake. To the chief I said, “We’ll see you downstairs. Is there an ambulance on its way?”

“Yes, Frank is coming too, and the paramedics…”

Trevellian stopped me as we moved toward the door.

“Stone, I’m sorry. I got it badly wrong.”

I shook my head again. “Not as much as you think. I need to be with my wife right now. We’ll talk.”

We made our way down the stairs, past the two grotesque forms on the wooden floor of the lobby and out onto Castle Hill, where police patrol cars and a SWAT van had already cordoned off the area, and in the distance the howl and wail of approaching sirens clawed the air.

I led Dehan to the ochre wall that enclosed the church and she leaned against it, wiping her face with her sleeves. I gave her my handkerchief and she blew her nose noisily. I wiped my own face with my sleeve and Dehan gave a damp laugh.

“Stone, I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I should have been more careful. We know what the Cabras are like. I should have been more careful.”

I shook my head. “I should never have let you go.”

She batted her eyelashes at me and smiled. “You couldn’t have stopped me, big guy,” she threw back, and we both laughed. Then she started crying again and had to screw up her face and hold her breath to stop the tears.

“When I think…”

“Don’t, baby…”

She nodded. “Exactly, baby.” She clutched her belly with her hands and leaned against me. “When Campbell had the knife…”

I couldn’t say anything. My jaw was clamped shut too hard. I held her tight and kissed the top of her head.

The growl of an engine and the squeak of tires told me Frank and the ambulances were arriving. I led Dehan out onto the sidewalk, where I corralled Frank and a couple of paramedics. One of them was a black Mother Earth with humorous, compassionate eyes. I handed Dehan over to her.

“She’s in shock. She was abducted and her life was threatened. She’ll tell you what happened. Look after her.” To Frank I said, “Between us, she may be pregnant.”

His eyes were two big Os, but Dehan was frowning.

“Where are you going?”

“There is something I have to clear up with the chief.”

“I’ll be right back.” I looked at Frank. “Keep her with you, Frank, till I get back.”

There was a slight narrowing of his eyes, but he nodded. “I will.”

I found the chief in the lobby, where they were lifting the bodies onto gurneys. He was on his way out to find me.

“John…” He took me aside, holding my shoulder, speaking low with urgent eyes. “John, you can’t do this kind of thing.”

“Don’t ask me to apologize, because I won’t.”

“There will be an inquiry. You could be suspended. Do you know the risks you took? You could have got both yourself and Dehan killed. And you know full well Vargas’s lawyer will start screaming about police brutality and murder. How can we prove you acted in self-defense?”

“I don’t care.”

His eyebrows shot up. He opened his mouth but I spoke first.

“They abducted my wife. We just heard she might be pregnant. There were six of them. Two of them jumped me down here, and Campbell was threatening to cut off her breasts and stab her in the womb. Frankly I showed extraordinary restraint, beyond the call of duty, in not killing Vargas when I had the chance. If a jury convicts me on this evidence, then so be it. But I did what I had to do as a man, not a cop, to save my wife and possibly my child. If it’s a crime for a man to protect his family, then I’m a criminal. And if it’s against the law to save your wife and your child from animals like Campbell and Vargas, then that’s a law I am going to break.”

“You were rash …”

“I wasn’t rash. The situation called for immediate action.” My voice began to rise. “They could have raped, tortured and murdered her while I exercised a level head!”

“I’m not going to discuss it, Chief. Do what you have to do. I did what I had to do, and I’ll take the consequences and the responsibility.”

He sighed and after a moment put a hand on my shoulder. “You know I will stand by you. You were exceptionally courageous, and you cleared up the Mommy’s Boy case. That has to count for something.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Joe is taking the Kuga away for analysis. We may get lucky. But either way we have Vargas’s confession on the phone recorded.”

I nodded. “Dehan is in the ambulance with the paramedics…”

He frowned at me, like he was seeing me for the first time.

“You look like hell. You’re badly bruised and cut. You should be there yourself.”

“Yeah, that can keep, sir. There is something I need to do first.”

“What, for heaven’s sake?”

“I’ll call you in a little while.”

I made my way back out of the church, shouldering my way through the milling uniforms and the guys in white space suits, crossed Homer Avenue and found my Jag in the parking lot of the gas station. My whole body was beginning to ache and I was feeling cold. I knew it was shock, but I had to keep it together a little longer. I fired up the old cat and pulled out onto Castle Hill.

It was a fifteen-minute drive under leaden skies, north along Castle Hill, then west and east along Bronxdale, Bogart and Pierce until I finally turned left into Hone Avenue and pulled up, after three blocks, outside a tall, narrow redbrick with a stone stoop, seven steps leading to a wooden door protected by a white, wrought-iron gate. To the left of the stoop was a garage.

I climbed painfully from the car and made my way up the stairs to ring the bell. Oliver Smith opened the door after a little less than a minute. He smiled under a small frown.

“Detective Stone.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder. “You’re alone.”

“May I come in?”

He hesitated for just a second. “Of course.”

He stood back to let me cross the threshold, then closed the door behind me and led the way into a dark living room. The drapes were drawn halfway across the front windows. At the back of the house light, tinted green by a lawn, filtered through French doors. A dining table and an open plan kitchen with a breakfast bar stood in shadows. In the living area a sofa and two armchairs in dark, old leather stood grouped around a cold fireplace and a small TV. Most of the walls in the living and dining areas were covered floor to ceiling in books.

An antique folding table stood by the window with chess pieces set out. He seemed to be partway through a game.

I stood looking around and after a moment I smiled at him.

“The one thing intelligence cannot hide, is its own brilliance.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but the frown lingered.

“You’re hurt. Oughtn’t you see a doctor?”

“That can wait.”

“Coffee? A drink?”

I shook my head. “May I sit?”

He gestured at one of the big chairs with both hands. “Please.”

I sat and he took the other one.

“You own and run Arguably the Best Magazine in Town .”

“Yes, that’s true.”

I smiled. “That’s a very brave title. Long titles are risky, but you pulled it off.”

He shrugged. “It’s the kind of thing people say in conversation, isn’t? Especially the kind of people who read my magazine. ‘Well, it is arguably the best magazine in town!’ It seems to be catchy.”

“I’ve read it occasionally. It’s very good. Intelligent and well-informed, without being pretentious. It reminds me of the New Yorker , or Punch .”

“Your main office is here in New York.”

His face had become expressionless. “Yes.”

“But I believe you opened another branch in San Francisco. When was that?”

“You know it was five years ago, in June 2015.”

“Why do you say I know that, Mr. Smith?”

He spread his hands. “We are not socially acquainted, Detective Stone. So why have you come to visit me?” He pointed at my jacket. “I am guessing you have set your telephone to record and you hope to trick me into saying something which you will frame as incriminating. Mommy’s Boy is besting you, and your bosses are pressuring you into getting a result.”

I offered him what you might call a bland smile.

“On the contrary.” I pointed to my bruised, scarred face. “These were caused by a man who has confessed to being part of a two-man team who were Mommy’s Boy. A mad preacher and a barely literate gang member who used the preacher’s congregation to select their victims.” I gave a small laugh. “The idea that serial killers are charismatic geniuses is a myth perpetuated by Hollywood, but the truth is they are sad, ineffectual men of below-average intelligence who cause a lot of unhappiness, but actually achieve nothing of any value or worth. I came to tell you it was over.”

His eyebrows had risen high upon his forehead. There was barely any expression on his face, but what there was was a tiny smile. I knew there was a battle going on inside him, and the euphoria was winning. Finally he could not resist any longer and said, “James Campbell and Nelson Vargas.”

“That’s remarkable, how did you know that?”

“I have been reading the old case reports. Campbell’s mother was the first victim, and James was an early suspect. And I remember a member of the Chupacabras was an early suspect too, Nelson Vargas, but he was eventually eliminated through lack of evidence. It was a small step to put it together from what you told me. Well, then, congratulations are in order.”

I screwed up my face. “Mnyah…”

“Oh, you’re not satisfied.”

His face was alive with interest. I shook my head. “Some things just don’t quite jibe for me.”

“There is no way to connect either Campbell or Vargas with Sharon Lipschitz. They never had any contact.”

“Aaahh…” He nodded. “The only one who could not be called a whore. A real teaser. I remember wondering, when I read the cases, why did he kill her? She was different from all the rest.”

“Exactly. A pattern that had begun to emerge in his killings: the planting of a pattern which was then broken. And what it tells me is that being a whore was never a factor in choosing his victims. He didn’t care whether they were whores or not.” I sat forward in my chair, shaking my head. “It may well be that over time, if he continues killing, he will even abandon the plump women and the breast cutting. I think all of those features are red herrings. I think there is just one thing that fascinates Mommy’s Boy, and that is killing and getting away with it: intellectual vanity.”

His face lit up and he laughed out loud. “You are intelligent, Detective Stone.”

“And if that is right, then Campbell and Vargas immediately lose credibility as suspects. Because to them, as misogynists, it is those very qualities: the fact of the women being whores in their eyes, the plump, maternal bodies, the breasts, the womb—all of these are core factors for these two men. Intellectual vanity is barely an issue for Campbell; it is nonexistent for Vargas. They were set up in a frame by the real Mommy’s Boy, who is not a mommy’s boy at all.”

“He’s not? I imagine the FBI have profiled him. Those guys are pretty good at that kind of thing.”

“A profiler is only as good as his data.”

“True. So what other data did you have to work with? He must have given some clue to his character. Though if he is a true genius, like Shakespeare, he might leave no trace of his own personality in his work.”

“Undoubtedly that is how he sees it.”

“Perhaps. I think it is more a punishment killing.”

He frowned. “Punishment for what?”

“Betrayal.” He shrugged, shook his head. I went on. “He kids himself into believing that it’s all about intellectual vanity, besting the cops and the system. He probably sees himself as an intellectual anarchist, defying the system at every turn and defeating it. I figure he has had to survive for decades without the support of a mother or a father, depending on his intelligence…”

“Aren’t you contradicting yourself? I thought you said he was of average intelligence or below.”

I shook my head. “No. Serial killers on the whole are below average, but this guy is smart. Not as smart as he thinks, but he is smart. And he has had to rely on his intelligence since he was thirteen…”

“Thirteen? That is very precise.”

“Yeah, that’s the age he was when his mother was murdered. He didn’t know his father, because his mother was a prostitute. So you see, to pretend to himself that the nature of the murders has no connection to his emotional baggage is to be in denial. He is very clever at subverting it and using it to confuse the cops, but the fact is he kills these women to punish his mother.”

“Punish her for what, for heaven’s sake? It was not her fault she got murdered!”

“Oh, but it was. Alaska has the highest incidence of serial killings in the USA, possibly the world, because serial killers go there to hunt. There are a lot of prostitutes servicing the seasonal labor, and his mother was one of them. And it was by being a prostitute that she got killed, and he watched it. She betrayed him and abandoned him, as he had always known she would, as she did every night when she took a client to her bed, and he had to lie there in his room listening to yet another man grunt and fumble over his mother. And finally, that night, which must feel like an eternal nightmare in his memory, she was killed and she went away, abandoned him forever: irrecoverable.”

His face was like gray marble. His eyes were dead, his mouth expressionless.

“My, that’s quite a creation.”

“I checked with the DMV.” He went rigid. I went on. “You do indeed own an MG MGB from 1969...”

“Well, that’s what I told you…”

“But you also own a 2014 Ford Kuga, in off white.” I told him the license plate and added, “And you were caught on the CCTV at the gas station around the corner from Claire Carter’s house on the day she was killed, driving that very car.”

He shook his head. “No, that day I was at home, and that car was in a lockup. You cannot possibly have seen me in the CCTV footage…”

“Why? Because you were dressed as a woman on the way there? Because you were disguised on the way back?” I laughed. “That car was at Claire Carter’s house, Mr. Smith, and I would like to know how it came to be there. I would also like to know how come you saw it and you didn’t recognize it as your own.”

He was laughing, but it was a strained laugh, and his face was flushed. “No, no, Detective. You don’t understand. I bought that car a long time ago and I never use it. I always use the MG. I haven’t seen that car in years. It’s been in a lockup!”

I made the face of understanding and nodded. “Oh, I see. When did you buy it?”

“Oh.” He flapped a hand. “Back in the day, when I lived in New York before.”

“Before you moved to San Francisco, to set up the other office…”

“Back in May of 2015...”

“Yes, oh, five years ago. That’s why the car was in the lockup.”

“One month after the murders stopped here in New York.”

He shrugged, stammered, laughed. “Hardly evidence of murder, Detective.”

“One month before the murders started in San Francisco.”

“Did they? I wasn’t aware.”

I lied then. “The car is being recovered right now from the lockup.”

He froze. “What? No. How could you possibly know where the lockup is?”

“It’s called diligent police work. There was a BOLO out for it, and local cops have been making inquiries. A witness told us a Kuga fitting that description was being kept in a lockup nearby. He thought it was strange it was never used, but the other day it was taken out and put back in the space of a few hours. Now, if you didn’t take it out and put it back, who did?”

“How could I possibly know? I haven’t been near the place in years.”

“And then there is the forensics, modern face recognition of the gas station footage, and the analysis of the products inside the car.”

“Face recognition?”

“Yeah, once the image is cleaned up, we can match the face on the footage inside the store to your face with a ninety-eight percent accuracy.”

He said, “No…” Then he frowned and his eyes narrowed. “What products?”

“The makeup and the essential oil. They’ll be able to date the residues. You did transport the makeup in that car, didn’t you? And the oil.”

I made a deliberate mistake. “Lancome—”

His brows knit, he whispered, “L’Oreal.”

“And tea tree oil—”

“Your mother used L’Oreal.”

He nodded. “And she was one of those pseudo-aromatherapists, always using lavender oil for everything. If you scratched your finger, lavender oil, if you grazed your knee – heaven forbid you ever did!—lavender oil! If you sneezed, lavender oil! She destroyed her son, murdered him, while he tried to sleep listening to her flirting and laughing and humping every lumberjack in two hundred miles square. You can’t use lavender oil to cure those wounds. She put lavender oil on my cuts and bruises to salve the damage to my body, but she left my heart and my soul gaping and suppurating.”

“I made inquiries. Your mother was murdered, and you witnessed it.”

“Dear God, how I hated that woman. And when I watched her strangled and stabbed by that animal, I felt nothing but liberation and I wanted more than anything else to be like him.”

“He was caught, tried and convicted.”

“Yes, he was deeply stupid. I spent years thinking about that night and the thousand and one ways he could have avoided being caught. I also thought about what I could have done, with my intellect, if my mother had supported me and helped me instead of sentencing me to the life of a whore’s son in remote Alaska. In the end…” He shrugged, then simpered, “It was too tempting not to give it a try. I drove down to the great urban jungle of Los Angeles. I had thoroughly researched the forensic methods and capabilities of the LAPD, and I selected a random prostitute in Watts. I killed her, left no trace of myself and kept tabs on the news over the next month. You wouldn’t believe the lack of interest that killing generated.”

He sighed. “The killing itself was enjoyable, like your first fuck with a girl who is available but not your type. So I began to practice with different girls in different places. I guess Freud was right and we all ultimately seek our mother, because I have to tell you I got a huge kick out of killing my first fat, jolly woman. It was the most intense sexual pleasure I had ever experienced. And that is what I have stuck to ever since.”

I prompted him. “But in the end it was not intellectually satisfying…”

“No. Not at all. It was like being married to a stupid woman. You begin to hunger for the intellectual stimulus. It’s not enough to fuck, you need the conversation too. So I set up a game of chess with your PD. And I may say they were very sadly lacking. Alvarez was a total ass. You, I have to hand it to you, were quite brilliant. I should never have gone to see you, that was a big mistake; never told you about the car. I thought that would send you off on a wild goose chase, or a wild Kuga chase, but it didn’t. I should never have gone,” he repeated, “but I couldn’t resist the curiosity.”

I gestured at him. “You are the gray man. You are largely nondescript, and if I am not mistaken, your mother smothered you, didn’t she? She was overprotective, overmothering, cosseted you…”

His face darkened. “She tried to turn me into a little girl, forever sprinkling me with that damned lavender, dressing me in cute little clothes, pouring damned cologne in my hair and slicking it down.” His voice became a growl. “She smothered me with her breasts and erased every trace of masculinity from me. For which I suppose I should thank her…”

I nodded. “Because you were able to gain access to these women’s houses by dressing as a woman. You have a light, almost feminine voice, learnt from her, I guess.”

“Yes.” He gave a short, dry laugh. “Women have this crazy idea that men are dangerous and women are not. They will always open the door to a girl. The number of women I have killed because they were willing to open the door to another woman! They don’t realize that women are the killers of the race, not men!”

I reached in my pocket and pulled out my cell. I laid it on the table so he could see it was recording. Then I switched it off.

“You know what happens now?”

He nodded. “You Mirandize me.”

“You’ll be tried and then you’ll be taken to a supermax prison, for the rest of your life. You will spend weeks on end in solitary confinement, and the few people you have contact with won’t be up to your intellectual bootlaces. You will probably never again have an intelligent conversation, as long as you live.”

He blinked, vaguely astonished, and I went on.

“And then there’s what those inmates do to pedophiles and serial killers, especially men like you, who are delicate, feminine and sensitive.” I could feel a cold, ruthless hardness inside me, like ancient ice congealing. “They will rape you and beat you, every day, and the wardens won’t even allow you to commit suicide. In some supermax prisons, the staff are worse than the inmates. You will pay for what you have done, with interest, every day of your life.”

“Do you own a gun?”

We sat for a long while, staring at each other. Finally I said, “Oliver Smith, I am putting you under arrest for the murder of Claire Carter and other women. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court of law. You have the right to a lawyer before we ask you any questions and during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to change your mind at any time. Do you understand me?”

“Then you’d better go get a bag and pack it. I’m taking you downtown and you won’t be coming back.”

“I need to go upstairs.”

I followed him up and waited outside his room while he went inside. I wasn’t surprised when he emerged a couple of minutes later holding a .38 revolver. He looked pale and sick. Maybe he’d never killed a man before. He raised the weapon and pointed it at me, and it was dancing in his shaking hands. He said:

“I tried to do it, but I can’t. You’ll have to do it for me.”

“And save you the suffering? Your due punishment? Why should I?”

“Because I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

“You? You kill women. You haven’t got the balls to kill a man.”

His face turned ugly. There was viciousness and a rage in his eyes and suddenly I saw the man who killed the women. His voice became an ugly hiss, his neck corded with tendons.

“You think I won’t? You think I can’t? I’ll blow your fucking knees off and then I’ll go looking for your fucking wife! And you can live the rest of your fucking life knowing what I did to her! ”

He ended in a scream, his face flushed with rage. I acknowledged to myself later that it was what I had hoped for. In the moment I was justified and I didn’t think. A wild fury welled up inside me and I snatched the barrel of the gun with my left hand and levered it back, in toward him, and with my right I squeezed his finger, where it lay still on the trigger. The .38 exploded and at point blank range the slug tore through his face and into his head. His body jerked and flailed for a second or two, and then fell to the carpeted floor with a big, ugly thud.