A Killer Like Me

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Sunday, August 5, 3:10 AM

Murphy sat on his sofa, Glock pistol in one hand, empty whiskey glass in the other. He rocked back and forth, unable to control the buzz saw of thoughts slicing through his brain. He shoved the pistol in his mouth and started to squeeze the trigger.

He had only vague recollections of coming home. The bloody surgical gloves he had worn were in the kitchen trash can, abandoned there when he grabbed a half-full bottle of Knob Creek from the pantry.

That bottle was now empty, sitting on the coffee table beside his empty holster.

Murphy lowered the gun. He had tried half a dozen times to go through with it, to pull the trigger and blow his brains out. Each time he got a little closer, putting just a little bit more pressure on the trigger. His Glock had an eight-pound trigger pull. He figured he was up to six, maybe seven pounds of pressure.

Next time it would go off.

He stared at his pistol, then at the empty whiskey bottle. There was a six-pack of Bud Light in the refrigerator. His throat was dry, like someone had poured cat litter down it. He climbed off the sofa and stumbled into the kitchen. He brought the whole six-pack back with him. He popped open one of the beers and downed half the can in a single gulp. The ice-cold liquid felt good running down his throat.

There was no way out of this. He had murdered a woman, broken into her house in the middle of the night and strangled her.

Dawn was less than three hours away. He had to muster the courage by then to do the right thing.

I need to be dead by the time the sun comes up.

He chugged the rest of the beer and then popped the top on another one.

What the hell had happened? he asked himself. Again and again he flashed back to that scene in the hallway. Marcy Edwards stepping out of the bathroom, the terrified look on her face, the scream.

It had been her screaming that had done it, that had forced his hand. If she had not screamed, he might have been able to talk to her. He could have started with the truth, that he was the detective in charge of the serial-killer task force. Then he could have lied, claiming he was following up on an anonymous tip. Someone had called in the serial killer’s address. He didn’t have enough for a search warrant, but he was desperate to stop more women from being murdered, even if it took an illegal search.

That story might have even flown with PIB.

But Marcy Edwards had screamed. And Murphy had strangled her.

What had happened next existed in his memory as nothing more than a blur of images. He remembered running through the house, looking for children or an infirm parent stuffed in a hospital bed. But the house was empty. He remembered stopping to examine the damage he had done to the back door, thinking how similar it looked to the pry marks on Sandra Jackson’s door. He remembered his plodding steps as he approached the bathroom again.

He remembered Marcy Edwards lying on her back, her nightgown torn open, exactly as he had left her. He remembered being surprised she hadn’t moved. This couldn’t be real. This had to be a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. She was dead.

He was afraid to touch her. But he had to. He rolled her onto her stomach and yanked her nightgown up high enough to expose her buttocks and lower back. He pulled his folding knife from his pocket and flicked it open. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to carve into her flesh.

He remembered what he had done instead. Using the gloved index finger of his left hand, he had traced the letters L-O-G in blood on the cold tile floor. Desperation was what it had been. A panicked man’s attempt to distance himself from the horrible thing he had done.

Then he stumbled out the back door and staggered to his car. He was halfway home before he realized he was driving without headlights. He was lucky a cop hadn’t pulled him over.

It was only after he got inside his apartment that he noticed he was still wearing the bloody latex gloves. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized he should wipe down the inside of his car and his apartment doorknob with bleach and burn the gloves, but he didn’t care. He was going to be dead soon.

Sitting on his sofa, Murphy raised his gun again. He opened his mouth and clamped his teeth down on the muzzle. He wrapped his index finger around the trigger and squeezed, watching his middle knuckle draw farther away. It stopped at what he guessed was only a few ounces of pressure away from tripping the firing pin.

He took a deep breath and held the gun steady. One tiny pull, a millimeter perhaps, and it would be over. One tug on the trigger and he could silence the raging guilt feeding on his insides. His finger tightened.

He let the breath out slowly, forcing himself to relax. This time had been the closest so far. Next time he would do it.

Murphy polished off the second beer and opened a third.

For him, the serial-killer case was over. Gaudet, along with those two numskulls, Doggs and Calumet, would have to handle it. Murphy wondered about the afterlife. Was all that Catholic crap his mother and the priests and the nuns had rammed down his throat for all those years really true? If so, he would certainly be in hell before the sun came up.

Or maybe death was like an old friend had once said, just a bunch of nothing, absolute unconsciousness. He was hoping for that. That sounded painless-no guilt, no remorse, no regrets.

By the time Murphy finished his third beer, his eyelids were so heavy he couldn’t keep them open for more than a few seconds at a stretch. His pistol lay in his lap. It wasn’t going anywhere. Just a few more minutes of life. He would allow himself one more mortal pleasure before condemning himself to eternal damnation. He put his head down on the arm of the sofa. A five-minute nap. Then he would kill himself.

Surely, the devil could wait five minutes.

The killer hits the enter key on his laptop keyboard, the final step to uploading his new video to the Devil’s Den Web site. In the bottom right-hand corner of his screen, the digital clock reads 3:35 AM. Within two hours, the video will be viewable on the Web site, and within three or four hours, tens of thousands of e-mail addresses will receive a link to the video file stored on servers in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

He rubs his hands together in anticipation. Everything is coming together. Even the unexpected developments-the sodomite bar and Kiesha-have been godsends.

Police officers are two-dimensional thinkers, trained to look for simple patterns. Several of his recent cleansings fit a pattern. That was how Murphy stumbled upon his work. That was good. He wanted the publicity. But he didn’t want to make things too easy for them.

Nothing ruins a pattern like randomness. Patterns represent order. Randomness represents chaos. His sudden deviation from his plan has injected randomness into whatever patterns the oafish police thought they uncovered.

Only one thing disturbs him, a literal dark cloud on the horizon. The coming hurricane.

Driving back home from the house on Burgundy, he heard a radio announcer say that the storm was bearing down on the Florida Keys. Forecasters are predicting that Catherine, now a category-three hurricane, could plow into the Gulf of Mexico as early as this evening. The warm waters of the gulf, the forecasters say, could strengthen the already-powerful storm to a category four by late tonight. Computer projections of the storm’s path, what the weather people call the cone of uncertainty, are centered on New Orleans.

Unfortunately, the dire storm warnings have already pulled some of the media’s attention away from the beheading of Sandra Jackson. But even a deadly hurricane won’t be able to compete with the killer’s newest video.

He shuts down his computer and turns away from his small desk. Exhaustion has overtaken him. He kicks off his shoes, pants, and shirt and dives into bed. With the covers pulled over his head, he stares into the darkness and thinks about tomorrow… today, really. After a few hours’ sleep, he will get up and watch the Sunday talk shows. His work, the Lord’s work-one and the same-will be on every channel.

The killer closes his eyes and smiles.

A hard knock rattled Murphy’s door. He came awake slowly and painfully as the pounding on the door increased in tempo, miraculously matching the pounding inside his skull. When he pried his eyes open, the daylight stabbed his brain. Someone’s cat had taken a shit in his mouth.

He sat up and realized he was still dressed. His first try at standing was a failure. A wave of dizziness and nausea forced him back down onto the sofa. The knocking continued. He recognized it as police knocking. They must have found the body, he thought. Somehow they had already linked him to the murder.

He struggled to his feet again and managed to stay upright. “I’m coming.”

The knocking stopped. The cable box on the TV showed 8:05 AM.

Murphy lurched toward the door. When he got there he looked through the peephole. On the other side stood two uniformed policemen. Murphy glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen. The trash can, filled to the top, was clearly visible. On top of the garbage lay the bloody surgical gloves. He glanced down. His pants were dark, but there were darker stains on his knees-bloodstains.

He peeped again through the hole. He saw one of the officers rap on the door. “Detective Murphy,” the cop called out.

There was no time and nowhere to run. Murphy’s apartment didn’t even have a back way out. He took a deep breath and pulled open the door.

There was just the two of them. One in his midforties, the other in his early twenties. Probably a field-training officer with a rookie partner. The older cop looked familiar, but Murphy couldn’t place him. He stared at Murphy with unfiltered disgust. The rookie just looked embarrassed.

Relief flooded through Murphy. If they were here to arrest him, there would be more of them.

“You Murphy?” the older cop asked.

Murphy tried to speak but the cat shit was clogging his throat. So he just nodded.

“The command desk sent us. Homicide has been trying to raise you on the radio and on your cell phone for a couple of hours.”

Murphy swallowed hard. The lump of cat shit went down. “The battery died.”

The cop shrugged. “None of my business. All I know is we were ordered to tell you to call in right away.” He lifted his portable radio from his belt holder. “You can use my radio if you want.”

Murphy waved it off. “That won’t be necessary.” He leaned on the doorjamb. His head was spinning. “Did they say why they want me?”

The cop shook his head. “Nobody tells me shit. And that’s the way I like it.”

“Okay, thanks for coming by.” Murphy tried to push the door closed, but the older cop jammed it with his foot.

“Piece of advice?” the cop said.

Murphy didn’t answer.

“I’ll give it to you anyway.” He took his foot out of the door. “Take a fucking shower before you go in. You smell like shit… shit and booze.”

“I will. Thanks again.” Murphy shut the door.

He sprinted into the kitchen and puked in the sink.

When he finished heaving, he stumbled into his bedroom, stripped off his pants and threw them into a corner. He found his suit coat hanging on the bedroom doorknob and tossed it into the corner too. Next, he dropped his shirt, tie, undershirt, and boxers on top of his suit. He found his shoes and slung them into the corner.

Murphy stared at the pile of clothes.

His suit pants had Marcy Edwards’s blood staining the knees. There was probably more of her blood on his shirt and tie and on his shoes. He had probably left bloody footprints inside her house that the crime lab could match to his shoes. Then there were the bloody gloves in his kitchen.

Murphy knew there was more than enough evidence in his apartment to put him in Angola for the rest of his life, maybe even land him on death row. He wouldn’t be the first New Orleans cop to get the death penalty.

He laid out a clean suit and shirt on the bed, then added a tie, a pair of boxers, a T-shirt, and a pair of socks. At the back of his closet he found an old pair of black wing tips. He wiped off the dust and set them next to his bed.

Standing at the bathroom sink, he downed three generic painkillers. Then he stared at himself in the mirror and realized he looked even worse then he felt. So he swallowed three more pills.

He stood under the showerhead for ten minutes with the water as hot as he could stand it, trying to scald himself clean. Then he picked up a washcloth and a bar of soap and scrubbed his skin raw. He washed his hair and shaved.

After getting dressed, Murphy slipped his gun onto his right hip and clipped his gold detective’s badge to the front of his pants. He was sure it would be the last time he would ever wear either.

They know what I’ve done and they’re giving me a chance to turn myself in.

Murphy stepped out of his apartment door and locked it behind him.

He had given up the idea of killing himself. Some cultures, particularly the Japanese warrior class and the ancient Romans, had considered suicide an honorable way to atone for dishonorable behavior. German soldiers during World War II, and even a lot of American cops, thought of it the same way.

Murphy disagreed.

Maybe it was due to his Catholic upbringing-brainwashing was how he liked to think of it-but he viewed suicide as a gutless way to die, the last refuge of a coward. Early this morning he had been close to taking the coward’s way out. Now he was going to face up to what he had done.

Outside, everything was quiet.

He half-expected a SWAT team to be waiting for him, but there was nothing but a beautiful Sunday morning. He lifted his face toward the sun and took a deep breath. The smell of night-blooming jasmine still hung in the air.

Murphy’s cell phone and radio were right where he had left them, on the passenger seat of his Taurus, both switched off. He left them that way. He didn’t want to talk to anyone.

Driving to the Homicide office, Murphy wondered why the rank was letting him self-surrender. Why had they not sent someone to arrest him at his apartment? Why send just two cops to tell him to call the office? Did they want him to kill himself? Did they want him to save them from the expense and embarrassment of a public trial? With a prolific serial murderer on the loose and a monstrous storm bearing down on the city, did they really need another killer cop on the front page of every newspaper in the country?

Murphy dropped his right hand from the steering wheel and slipped it under his suit coat. He brushed his fingertips across the top of his pistol. It would be so easy. Just pull over to the side of the road. Write a note about what had happened at Marcy Edwards’s house. Apologize to her family. Then unholster his Glock one last time. And POP!

No more troubles, no more need for explanations.

But he couldn’t do it.

Take your punishment like a man is what his father would have told him.

To suffer the torment of an ex-cop in prison and to eventually be executed by the state were the only things he could do to try to atone for his crime.

Murphy pulled into the police-academy parking lot at 9:10. Several TV-news satellite trucks were parked around the building. Had the media gotten the story already? Even though it was Sunday morning, he had trouble finding a place to park. He ended up double-parked behind another detective’s car.

As he climbed out of his Taurus, he glanced at his briefcase on the backseat. He decided to leave it. There was no need for a briefcase where he was going. He walked across the parking lot. The air outside the academy building didn’t smell like jasmine, but the breeze still smelled fresh. To Murphy it smelled like freedom.

He had been to Central Lockup hundreds of times. More than enough to know what it smelled like, to know that it stank of disinfectant, and sweat, and piss, and shit, and sometimes of blood. There was no scent of night-blooming jasmine there, and certainly not at Angola. No fresh breeze of freedom.

He pulled open the door to the Homicide office and stepped inside. The first person he saw was Captain Donovan.