“I don’t think a woman’s behind this.”
“Because women traditionally are not serial killers?”
“Women commit crimes of passion, sure, but cold-blooded, planned-out, multiple killings like this? No, that’s usually men’s work.”
After we were finished, we both ordered espresso. The waiter was walking away when Noah called him back and added one zabaglione to the order.
When it arrived, he made me taste it, feeding me the strawberries drenched with the thick, sweet sauce from his spoon. I tried to ignore the intimate way he once again offered me the food. And I tried not to pay attention to the way he was looking at my lips as I took the sugary concoction, or the pressure as he pulled the spoon out of my mouth.
He would have let anyone taste his dessert, I told myself. It was not an invitation. Not a suggestion of anything.
Except I knew it was. And that frightened me because Noah was stronger than I was. And his strengths made me realize my own weaknesses. I didn’t want to be reminded of them. Not by him. Or by anyone.
Twenty-Three
Out on the street, the wind swirling around us, pushing us toward each other, I dreaded how we were going to say good-night.
“Is Dulcie home?”
Surprised by Noah’s directness, even though I shouldn’t have been, I shook my head before I could stop myself.
“So you don’t have to go right home?”
“No, but I should. I have an early patient.”
“Too early for you to come to the station and look at the photographs that we asked the Times to withhold?”
Then his mouth moved, the corners going up, and his eyes twinkled in the light of the street lamp and he smiled. All-knowing and seductive. A laughing smile without any sound. He’d got me. And he knew it. He’d probably done it on purpose. Teased me into thinking he was asking one thing but offering something else entirely. Was he getting me back for not returning his calls last July?
Torn between wanting very much to see the photographs and being embarrassed, I took a deep breath and inhaled the crisp night air. In it, I smelled something familiar. But what?
And then I knew, it was Noah’s cologne: rosemary and mint.
Looking away from him so he couldn’t read what I was thinking or feeling, I told him yes, I’d like to see the pictures.
It could have been 10:00 a.m. instead of 10:00 p.m. at the station. We walked through the busy lobby and crowded halls, up the stairs, down the hall, around a corner and into the office Noah shared with Mark Perez.
The room was unexceptional. Institutional, well-used furniture, windows that needed to be washed, scratchedup tables, worn wood floors. But despite the drab anonymity, the room crackled with the detectives’ energy. A row of jade plants and ivy in colorful pots sat on the windowsill-green and healthy looking, though I couldn’t imagine much sun made it through those windows. There was a Mardi Gras mask hanging from the silver lamp on Jordain’s desk.
But the focus of the office was the south wall. It was covered with photographs, notes, maps and reports: a collage of images and papers, some sections enlarged so much they were just patches of color, mosaics without meaning.
But they did mean something.
Noah took my arm in an impersonal way and led me to the far right section of the wall.
“Start here.”
Two shots were side by side, each taken from an identical angle. It appeared the photographer had stood about two feet in front of the bodies. This specific point of view distorted the perspective of the corpse so the feet were larger than normal, as was the penis, but the chest and the head were diminished.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded but wasn’t sure; these men had not just been killed, they had been sexualized. The bruises around their wrists, necks, ankles and testicles, which Betsy Young had described to me, were vivid purple, black and blue. Shades of violence and abuse. For relief I looked at the background, which was plain gray and smooth. Not a wall. There were no bumps or cracks, no suggestion of windows, doors or ambient light. I thought that I should know where they were but I couldn’t focus.
“Where are they?” I asked Noah.
If he thought it was strange that my first question was about the walls, he didn’t say so.
“We don’t know yet, but we think that gray expanse is a studio backdrop. Many photographers have rolls of different drops in their studios, and depending on what they need, they just pull down the effect they want.”
I nodded. I knew exactly what he was talking about. When Mitch was starting out he’d worked as the assistant to a director who shot food and tabletop commercials. I’d seen backdrops like that.
“By pulling it down and all the way out he’s covered the floor, making sure to conceal any clues,” Noah continued.
“It would be far too obvious to assume the killer is a photographer, right?”
“No. Nothing is ever too obvious. But we had a professional look at the shots, and he said the exposures are somewhat amateurish and the developing is uneven. He feels that whoever took them is at ease with a camera and understands composition but isn’t someone who shoots for a living.”
I sat down in the chair opposite his desk, facing the collage, unable to stop staring at the pictures.
“That means the photographer is self-taught or someone who studied photography somewhere. After all, he’s developing the shots himself.”
“That last part fits the profile,” Noah said. “Serial killers are loners. They feel isolated, disconnected from society. Misunderstood. The killings can even be a misguided way to connect to people. Either to the victims or to the people who are going to be distraught over the deaths. They work alone, and I’m pretty sure that this guy didn’t take these shots into the corner One-Hour Photo. He’s probably got his own darkroom.”
“Can you say that’s he’s a serial killer with only two victims? Maybe there was a reason he needed to kill the two of them and now he’s finished. It might be all over.” I was still staring, riveted to the images of the pale corpses.
Noah answered me, but I didn’t hear him; I’d noticed something in one of the photographs.
Twenty-Four
The coffee was extremely hot, but Paul Lessor wasn’t paying attention and burned his tongue so badly he slammed the cup down. The liquid flew up in an arc and splashed down on the front page of the New York Times, just missing the article he was reading. The coffee seeped into the paper and spread. Was it an omen that the stain stopped just at the edge of the story about Timothy Wheaton?
The pain inside his mouth was intense, but Paul couldn’t be bothered with that now. He read every word and thought about all the men from the Scarlet Society who were also reading this at their desks, at their breakfast tables, on the subway, in their chauffeur-driven cars, in their taxis. They were probably shitting in their pants.
Two men. First missing. Now lifeless bodies with pathetic numbers on the soles of their feet. Number 1. And now number 2.
For the first time in his life, Paul Lessor understood the expression “rubbing your hands together with glee.” This was the best feeling he’d had in a long time. This was revenge. This was comeuppance. Ha. If he couldn’t come anymore, at least he could get gratification thinking about how this was screwing with the head of every man who ever visited the society and every man who had ever looked at him with pity.
So what if he couldn’t get it up? They wouldn’t be able to get it up anymore, either. Thorazine wasn’t the only thing that made you impotent. Fear did it, too. Every one of those men must be choking on their croissants, spilling their orange juice, breaking out in a sweat, feeling a cramp in their stomachs or a loosening of their bowels. They were questioning their little hobby, now weren’t they? Wondering what they could do differently from Philip and Timothy so they could go back to the society but escape the fate of these two. Except even if they braved it, overcame their fright, how good would the sex be now, really?