“Fair enough. Let’s ask Dag. He’ll know.”
Schoch told Peter that her toothpick-chewing partner, Dag, had recently been assigned to work on a slew of cold cases from that year, and he’d be the person to ask. She called Dag on her intercom. “You busy? I need a favor.”
“What’s going on,” Dag replied over the squawk box.
“Peter Warlock is here. He needs our help.”
Moments later, Detective Sal Dagastino, known as Dag to his friends, entered the cubicle and pumped Peter’s hand. “How’s life in the fast lane?” he asked.
“Traveling at the speed of sound,” Peter replied.
“I need to score four tickets for Saturday night’s show,” Dag said without missing a beat. “My in-laws are coming to town, and I want to show them a good time.”
“Consider it done. You can pick them up at Will Call. Will third row center do the trick?”
“Perfect. Now it’s my turn. What do you need?”
“I was wondering if there were any unsolved murders or violent crimes which took place the night my parents died. Detective Schoch said you’ve been working cold cases lately.”
“Peter was roaming the city that night and might have seen something,” Schoch explained.
As a rule, cops did not share information about open investigations. But Peter had helped Dag and Schoch solve a difficult murder case not long ago, and gained their trust. The toothpick twirled between Dag’s teeth as he considered their visitor’s request.
“There were several violent killings in the city that night that were never solved,” Dag said. “We recently reopened them because of a new DNA test called ‘scraping.’ Scraping lets us test for DNA in places we weren’t able to test before.”
Peter swallowed hard. Several violent killings. Were they his doing?
“Were the cases linked?” he asked.
“They sure were. All our victims had skin underneath their fingernails which wasn’t theirs,” Dag said. “With scraping, we were able to find DNA, and compare it. The same assailant was responsible, and might be a serial killer. Kind of scary to think this person has been roaming around the city for the past eighteen years and we didn’t know it.”
Pools of black opened up before Peter’s eyes, and he would have liked nothing better than to jump through one of them, and disappear. He felt the weight of Dag’s stare, and realized the detective was waiting for a response. If the police shared information with you, they expected you to give something in return, and he said, “The memories from that night have recently been coming back to me. Maybe while I was roaming the city I came across your killer.”
“Would you remember him?”
“I might.”
“How about his victims? Would you remember them?”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
The toothpick did another slow twirl. Going to the next cubicle, Dag grabbed a manila folder off the top of a pile, and dropped it in Peter’s lap upon his return.
“That’s them,” Dag said.
“You mean the victims?”
“That’s right. The photos aren’t pretty.”
The file felt heavy. “How many unsolved cases were there that night?”
“Six.”
Peter thought he was going to be sick. Possessed little boy runs amok in city, killing six innocent people. It sounded like the plot to a low-budget horror film.
“Not that any of them were going to be missed,” Dag went on. “Whoever took those guys out was doing the good citizens of New York a favor, and deserves a medal.”
“You’re starting to sound like a vigilante, Dag,” Schoch said.
“Just speaking my mind,” her partner said.
“Were the victims bad people?” Peter asked.
“Scum of the earth,” Dag said. “I say good riddance.”
Peter went through the file. It contained six Homicide reports that had been written back in the day when cops used typewriters. Each report had its own collection of gruesome crime-scene photographs. Each victim had died in a pool of his own blood. He thought back to the snapshot of him in his Batman pajamas. The front of his pj’s had been blood soaked. No doubt the shedding of blood was something the demon found appealing.
38
An approximate time of death was printed on each report. All the victims had died during the five hours he’d been roaming the city. All had also been found within a twenty-block radius of the Shubert Theatre in Times Square, where his parents had been abducted.
The cases had other similarities as well. Each victim had a lengthy criminal record, and was wanted by the law. One rapist, an armed robber, three men wanted for murder, and a drug dealer known for selling poisonous drugs to his clients. In keeping with the theme of his rampage, they had died brutally, with their necks broken and skulls crushed in, their bodies left in alleyways to be discovered a few hours later.
He closed the file. He was going to have to find a way to deal with this; he just didn’t know how. When he spoke, his voice sounded like a recording. “Did anyone see who did this?”
“There was one eyewitness,” Dag said. “A woman walking her dog saw our killer kneeling over one of the victims, strangling the crap out of him.”
I killed them with my bare hands, he thought. How lovely.
“Did she give you a physical description?”
“Witness said he was a little guy, if you can believe that.”
He started to tremble. For the first time, he realized what a huge risk he’d taken coming here. If he wasn’t careful, Dag and Schoch would realize that he was the little guy the eyewitness had seen, and they’d take a sample of his DNA, compare it to the victims’ samples, and then they’d have to arrest him.
Dag wore a blank look, and wasn’t making the connection. Schoch hadn’t made the connection yet, either. So far so good, but what about later on? They were smart cops, and their brains worked like filters. Eventually, it would dawn on them why Peter had come to see them.
He needed to stop that from happening, and decided to blur their memories. Magicians were masters at blurring their audiences’ memories, and he would do the same with the detectives.
He asked Dag what several notations he’d seen in the homicide reports referred to. Dag obliged him, and spent five minutes explaining the notations. When Dag was done, Peter asked Schoch to explain the coroner’s reports in the files. Schoch obliged him as well, and five more minutes were spent. Getting the detectives talking served an important purpose. Instead of asking questions, they were now having to answer questions. This made them switch gears, and use a different part of their brains.
The second thing it did was kill time. The further away they moved from the thing Peter didn’t want them to remember, the less in focus the memory became. If he killed enough time, the memory would become blurred with the things he was now asking them. Magicians called this stalling technique time delay. During a magic show, things happened onstage which the magician did not want the audience to remember. By creating a time delay, the audience often forgot the very thing which allowed the trick to work.
Peter worked his magic on the detectives. Soon they looked bored, and ready to go back to work. “Thanks for talking to me. I’ll let you know if I remember anything from that night.”
The phone on the desk lit up. Schoch snatched the receiver and waved good-bye. Dag walked him to the elevators and punched the button.
“I’ll e-mail you about those tickets,” the detective said.
“I won’t forget,” Peter promised.
Riding down in the elevator, Peter hugged himself and shut his eyes. How could he have murdered six men with his bare hands and not remember the act? It just didn’t seem possible.