Death Match

He was driving home. That’s how it began: driving home from Poughkeepsie yet again, in brilliant sunlight on a Friday afternoon. The last several times he’d made the sixty-mile journey back to Westport, he’d been so tired he feared falling asleep at the wheel. This afternoon, however, he was wide awake.

I’ve got what I need now, the murderer had written in blood on the picture window. Thank you.

He reached down for the car phone, dialed.

“Lash residence,” came the voice of Karl Broden, his wife’s brother.

“Karl.”

“Hi, Chris. Where are you?”

“Heading home. I’ll be there in an hour or so. Shirley home?”

“She went out to run some errands.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“Good enough. Say, you want me to fire up the grill, marinate those gulf prawns we picked up last night?”

“There’s an idea. Stick some beers in the freezer for me, too.”

“Done.”

He thought briefly about his brother-in-law. Karl was so unlike his sister. Easygoing and loosely strung, unabashedly nonintellectual. Every time Karl came to visit, the level of tension in the house decreased markedly. This time he’d dropped in suddenly, the day before, almost as if he’d known his presence was desperately needed.

But then his thoughts returned to Poughkeepsie and the stark image of the final murder scene.

I’ve got what I need now. Thank you.

The Poughkeepsie cops had been almost jovial all morning; ribbing each other good-naturedly, exchanging coarse jokes over the water cooler. Even though the killer eluded their roadblocks, they were buoyed by what seemed the promise of no more murders. Lash felt no such relief. To him, the message was the first piece of the puzzle to make sense; the only communication from the murderer that felt real. And its brevity, its confidence, filled him with anxiety.

What did he have now? What had he needed?

Had killing those four women satisfied some sick requirement, filled some void? But that wasn’t how it worked with serial killers: theirs was a consuming thirst that could never be quenched.

And then there was the inconsistency of the killings. The first two, despite superficial similarities — the bloody messages covering the walls, the arrangement of the corpses — contradicted all basic profiles in a dozen ways.

What made this final killing different?

He thought about this all the way across Dutchess and Putnam counties and into Connecticut. It was the first time, he was convinced, the murderer had shown his true colors.

Because he had what he wanted.

Why was there only one message this time, instead of a hundred? And why was it written on the picture window, not the walls? On the glass, against the backdrop of night, it would be extremely hard to make out…

And then suddenly, almost without conscious thought, he found his perspective on the crime scene changing. No longer was he looking at the bloody message from inside the bedroom. His angle shifted, turning as if on a camera dolly, coming around a hundred and eighty degrees until he was outside the house, in the woods, looking from the blackness at the big lighted window. At the figures silhouetted there — a police captain, the lead homicide detective, an FBI profiler. The same three people who’d been at the previous murders.

There was something that the three murders did have in common. They had all taken place at night, in bedrooms with big picture windows. And the blinds of the windows had always been open…

Frantically, he reached for the phone, dialed again.

“Poughkeepsie police, Homicide Division,” came the voice. “Kravitz speaking.”

“This is Christopher Lash. I need to speak with Masterton, right away.”

“I’m sorry, Agent Lash. The captain left half an hour ago.”

“Then give me the lead detective, what’s his name. Ahearn.”

“He left with the captain, sir.”

“You know where they went?”

“It’s Friday night, sir. The captain and Detective Ahearn always go out for a few cold ones before heading home.”

“Which bar?”

“I don’t know, sir. Could be one of half a dozen.”

He thought quickly. Kravitz, the cop at the duty desk, had seemed like a smart, competent officer.

“Kravitz, you need to listen to me. Listen very carefully.”

“Yes, Agent Lash.”

He tucked the phone under his chin briefly while negotiating the exit onto Saugatuck Avenue, fighting the weekend traffic. “You have to try each of the bars, in turn. Hear me? Get some of the other officers to help you man the phones.”

“Sir?” Kravitz’s voice sounded dubious.

“It’s vital, Kravitz, you hear me? Vital.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you reach Masterton, you are to tell him this: we’ve been wrong about this killer. He’s not a serial murderer.”

“Not a serial murderer?” The voice sounded even more dubious.

“You don’t understand. Of course he’s a murderer. But he’s not a serial-type. He’s an assassin-type.”

That was the tag forensic psychologists used. Sometimes assassin-types murdered random victims from the tops of water towers. Other times they sought out favorite celebrities, the way Mark David Chapman did. They had one thing in common: tortured, useless lives that only developed meaning through acts of targeted violence.

Meanwhile, there was silence on the other end of the line.

“I don’t have time to explain, Sergeant. It’s a subcategory of mass murderer. For them, it’s all about domination, control, revenge. This guy hates cops. There’s probably a fascination, a love-hate dynamic, working here. Maybe his father was both a cop and an abusive parent, I don’t know. But he’s an assassin-type. It’s the only answer.”

“Sir, I don’t understand.”

“You were at the scenes of the first three murders. There was no pattern. The meaningless messages on the walls, the inconsistent tableaux. Nothing fit. That’s because we were dealing with somebody imitating a serial murderer. That’s why nothing held together: it was all a ruse. Did you notice the big picture windows at each site, open to the night? Our killer wasn’t running away: he was out there, every time. He was hunting cops, picking out his targets. Those murdered women were just bait.”

“Sir?”

He pulled the car onto Greens Farms Road. In another minute or two, once he got home, he’d start making calls himself. For now, he had to rely on Kravitz. Seconds counted.

“Just do as I say, Officer. Find Masterton, tell him everything I just told you. He and Ahearn were at the window each time, they have to take steps to protect themselves. Tell him to look for a white male, most likely in his mid to late twenties. A loner, but somebody who can blend with the crowd. He’ll probably be driving a sporty car to compensate for low self-esteem. You need to talk to your fellow officers about any wannabees they might have noticed recently, hanging around cop bars and restaurants, ingratiating themselves.”

Another silence on the line.

“Kravitz, damn it, do you have that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get busy.” Just ahead lay his own block, and home. Traffic was lighter here. As he hung up, a car pulled out of his street and accelerated past him down Compo. A Pontiac Firebird, red.

He drove past, barely noticing. He reminded himself that he, too, was a target. He’d been silhouetted in that window, too. He’d have to get Karl and Shirley out of the house — she’d wither him, as usual, with comments on how dangerous his job was — and then he’d have to look into what to do about his own—

He started abruptly. A Pontiac Firebird, red, recent model…

He slowed, glanced into the rearview mirror.

The car was gone.

Now he stepped on the accelerator again, hard, taking the corner with a shriek of rubber, pulling his gun from its holster, but even as their house came into view he felt a cold dread seize him.

He already knew, with terrible certainty, what it was he would find inside.