25

Almost exactly twelve hours after Pendergast left Lasher’s apartment, Bryce Harriman was pacing restlessly through his one-bedroom apartment on Seventy-Second and Madison. The apartment was in a converted prewar building, and the conversion had given the apartment a bizarre layout that allowed for a true circuit: from the living room, through the kitchen, into one door of the bathroom, out the other door into the bedroom, and then from the bedroom through a short, closet-lined hallway that led back to the living room.

The building had high ceilings, a posh lobby, and twenty-four-hour doormen, but the apartment was rent-stabilized and held under the name of Harriman’s aunt. When she passed away, which would probably be fairly soon, he’d have to leave and find someplace more in keeping with his salary. Just one more example of the fading fortunes of the Harriman family.

It was furnished in an eclectic style of cast-off pieces left to him by elderly relations, now departed. Many of them were valuable, and all were old. The only new thing in the entire apartment, outside of the kitchen appliances, was the laptop that sat on a Queen Anne table of figured Brazilian maple with cabriole legs — once in the possession of Great-Uncle Davidson, now these ten years under the earth.

Harriman paused in his pacing to approach the table. Besides the laptop with its glowing screen, there were three piles of paper, one for each murder, the sheets covered with notes, scrawls, doodles, rough diagrams, and the occasional question mark. He shuffled through them restlessly for a moment, then resumed his pacing.

That nagging frisson of professional anxiety, which had subsided somewhat after his coup with the Izolda Ozmian interview, had surfaced once again. He knew, he knew, what great stories these murders could be — but he was having his share of problems covering them. One difficulty was that his police sources weren’t that good, and they were not eager to help him out. His old archrival Smithback had been a master at cozying up to cops, buying them drinks, buttering them up, and cadging stories out of them. But, although he hated to admit it, Harriman just didn’t have the knack. Maybe it was his WASPy upbringing, the years at Choate and Dartmouth, growing up with the yacht-club-and-cocktail set — but whatever the reason, he just couldn’t relax with cops, couldn’t talk their talk. And they knew it. His stories suffered as a result.

But there was an even bigger problem here. Even if he was buddy-buddy with all the cops on the force, Harriman wasn’t sure it would help him this time around. Because they seemed as confused by these killings as he was. A dozen different theories were circulating: one killer, two killers, three killers, a copycat killer, a lone killer pretending to be a copycat. The theory du jour was that the Ozmian girl had been killed by one murderer, then decapitated later by somebody who had gone on to do more copycat killings. The cops wouldn’t say exactly why they thought the second and third killings were connected, but from what Harriman had been able to dig up it looked pretty clear the modus operandi was similar in both cases.

So in the wake of the Izolda Ozmian interview, he’d dutifully banged on all the doors, shown up at all the scenes, and coughed up the best stories he could. He’d made himself as visible during the press conference two days before as he possibly could without holding up a neon sign. But he wasn’t fooling himself: visibility alone didn’t sell papers, and these new stories of his were long on innuendo but short on facts and evidence.

He made two more perambulations of the apartment and stopped once again in the living room. The laptop sat there, word processor open, cursor blinking at him like a taunting middle finger. He looked around. Three walls of the room were covered with half-decent oils, watercolors, and sketches he’d inherited; the fourth wall was devoted to pictures of his deceased girlfriend, Shannon, as well as to a few plaques and awards he’d received for his work on spotlighting cancer research. The most prominent plaque was for the Shannon Croix Foundation, a fund he had set up in her name to gather money for medical research into uterine cancer. He had accomplished this with the help of the Post, which from time to time did charity drives in coordination with a series of articles. The foundation had become modestly successful, having brought in several million dollars. Harriman was on the board. There was nothing he could do to bring Shannon back — but at least he could do his best to ensure her death had not been entirely in vain.

With a sigh, he forced himself to take a seat at the table and shuffle through the three piles again. It was strange as hell — three beheadings, all in the same area, all within less than two weeks — but with no clear connection between them. Here were three people from different backgrounds, of different social strata, of different ages, professions, and proclivities. Different everything. It was crazy.

If only there was a commonality, he thought. Now, wouldn’t that be something? Not three stories, but one. One huge story. If he could find some common thread running through these murders, these three piles of paper…It could be the story of a lifetime.

He leaned back in his chair. Maybe he ought to head down to the precinct again, try to get some more info about the shootout the night before. They’d really called out the cavalry for that one. He knew it involved a person of interest in the Cantucci murder. But that’s all he could find out.

He just didn’t buy into these complex theories of copycats and multiple killers and conflicting motivations. His gut told him it was one killer. And if so, the killings had to have something in common besides the decapitations — a common motivation. But what? After all, here were three disgustingly rich scumbags who had never even met one another, and yet…

At this, he paused. Three disgustingly rich scumbags. Could that be it? Could that possibly be it?

Maybe not everything about the three victims was different, after all. It seemed so simple. So clean. Three rich scumbags who — in the killer’s mind — deserved to die. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Perfect sense.

In fact, it was the only theory that made sense.

He felt that tingling sensation running up his spine that only occurred when he was on to something big.

But he had to be careful here — very careful. It was a theory, after all. He didn’t want a repeat of that Von Menck story from a few years back, the crazy old scientist predicting New York’s imminent destruction by fire. That particular piece had landed him in hot water. No: if he really was on to something here, it had to be a theory that was backed up by solid reporting, facts, and evidence.

Slowly, deliberately, he paged through first one pile of sheets, then the second, and then the third, thinking carefully as he did so, looking for holes in his theory. Here were three people of overtly bad character. Ozmian, rich party girl; Cantucci, mob lawyer; Bogachyov, arms dealer and all-around asshole. But…it turned out Grace Ozmian had a terrible secret. And he would bet that the other two also had some grotesque evil hidden in their past. Of course they did. They weren’t just low-grade scumbags: each one must have done a horrible deed, like Grace Ozmian, that had never been adequately punished — the very nature of their professions made it almost inevitable. The longer he thought, the more he examined the evidence, the more certain he became. It was so simple, so obvious, it had been staring him in the face all the time.

He began pacing the apartment again, but now the pacing was different: excited, animated. Nobody had figured it out. The police didn’t have a clue. But the more he examined his discovery from every possible angle, the more he became confident…no, convinced…that he was right.

He strode back into the living room, sat down at the Queen Anne table, and pulled the laptop toward him. For a minute he sat motionless, composing his thoughts. And then he began to type: slowly at first, then faster and faster, the keys clacking deep into the snowy night. This would be a Christmas Day story that nobody would soon forget.

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