Marked

SEVEN

Why won’t they listen?

He’s right. About Proust. But nobody will listen. Just as nobody listened last time either. Jesus, what is wrong with these people?

The first forty-eight hours after a killing are crucial to the solving of the case. If you get nowhere in that time, chances are you’ll get nowhere period. Over half of that time has already elapsed. Try as he might to stay calm and allow the wheels of the investigation to grind on, Doyle can’t suppress the feeling that the Department is giving Proust space to slip out of the net. Ordering Doyle to back off is the exact opposite of what they should be doing, and it frustrates him that he doesn’t know a way to make them reconsider.

In his uptight state, he pulls into the parking space too quickly. Has to slam on the brakes to stop the vehicle from jumping the curb and mangling a street lamp. He feels his blood boiling in his veins as he gets out of the car. When the rain hits his skin he expects it to sizzle and burn off as steam.

And that’s another thing: this damned rain. When will it ease off? Maybe if it could give these other cops a chance to think in peace and quiet, they’d realize he needs to be listened to.

He ducks his head and jogs into the station house, sick of being constantly wet. He gets a nod from a uniform. He ignores it. The desk sergeant mutters something to him. He ignores that too. If it’s something trivial, then he doesn’t need to know; if it’s something important, he doesn’t want to be troubled by it. He’s got enough on his plate already.

He pounds up the stairs, heading for the squadroom. He’s not sure what he’ll do when he gets there. He is supposed to work the Megan Hamlyn case. That’s his top priority. Except he can’t work it the way he wants to work it, because nobody in this place wants to open their fucking ears and listen to what he has to say.

On the stairs he bumps into LeBlanc coming the other way. LeBlanc puts an arm out, gesturing for him to hold up.

‘Hey, Cal. Where’d you get to?’

Doyle keeps moving. ‘Not now, Tommy.’

LeBlanc puts a hand on Doyle’s arm, not knowing that another man has just been threatened with having his fingers broken for doing a similar thing.

‘Cal, we need to talk about this.’

‘No. We don’t.’

He pulls away from LeBlanc’s grasp and continues up the stairs.

‘Damn it,’ says LeBlanc. ‘I saved your ass with the boss today. I coulda told him what you did to Proust, but I didn’t. You know why? Because you’re my partner. Like it or not, we’re partners on this case. So how about you start treating me like one?’

Doyle pauses on the stairs, his back to LeBlanc. Thinking about the preconceptions. LeBlanc’s, but maybe his own too.

Slowly, he turns. ‘You wanna know what it’s about? I’ll show you.’

He continues up to the second floor, LeBlanc almost scraping his heels. He looks into an office normally occupied by one of the PAAs — the Police Administrative Aides — and finds it empty.

‘In there,’ he says to LeBlanc. ‘I’ll be right back.’

While the bemused LeBlanc enters the office, Doyle continues down the hall and into the squadroom. Ignoring the stares from Schneider, he goes to his desk, grabs one of the folders from its surface, then retraces his steps to join LeBlanc. In the office, he closes the door behind him.

LeBlanc says, ‘What’s with all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?’

Doyle doesn’t respond. He sits at the PAA’s desk, opens up the folder, and takes out a DVD. He presses a button on the computer in front of him. A tongue of black plastic slides out, and Doyle feeds it the disk and watches it swallow.

LeBlanc leans forward to get a better look at the screen. ‘What is this, Cal?’

Doyle mouse-clicks the play button. ‘Watch.’

The movie starts up. There are no opening credits. We go straight into the action, and boy, does it grab you by the throat. This is one to make you pause with the handful of popcorn on its way to your mouth.

Opening scene — what looks like a basement. Sparsely furnished. Plaster peeling off the walls. No carpet on the floor. In the center of the room, a crude platform fashioned from two wooden doors set atop a number of plastic crates. On the platform, a naked girl, face down. She is anchored to this dais with ropes on her wrists and ankles. There is no sound to this movie, but it is clear that the girl is crying, that she is in agony. Her body carries marks all over it. It’s hard to tell what they are or what caused them. Here and there, rivulets of blood trickle down her skin.

A man steps into view. He is visible only from the waist down, and it seems that he is wearing only tight leather shorts, which would be comical if the subject matter were not so serious. His legs are stout and hairy.

And he is carrying a bullwhip. And it is only seconds later that he is raising his arm out of view and bringing that whip down again. Slicing it through the air. Firing its tip at supersonic speed into the flesh of the young woman. There is no eroticism here. No soft spanking with a leather thong. This is sheer sadism, acted out on an unwilling participant. A victim, no less. When the tip of this whip strikes, it does so with ferocity. It opens up her flesh. It gouges out chunks. Her face pleads for mercy. She receives none.

Fade to black. No end credits. See you at the Oscars.

Except that this isn’t acting. This ain’t Tinseltown. Doyle knows it, and he can tell that LeBlanc knows it too.

‘Jesus,’ says LeBlanc. ‘What the fuck was that?’

‘A home movie. Or at least part of one. It was found on the hard drive of a scumbag who got arrested on porn charges. He said he found it on the Internet.’

‘Okaaay,’ says LeBlanc. ‘And this is relevant how?’

Doyle grabs the mouse and manipulates a slider on the screen to rewind the video a few frames. He’s not good with computers, but this he can manage. He’s done it enough times. He must have studied every frame of this clip.

‘Tell me what you see.’

LeBlanc leans forward again and pushes his spectacles up his nose.

‘A guy. A girl. The guy is torturing the girl. That’s it. Cecil B. DeMille it ain’t.’

‘Closer. The detail.’

A pause while Doyle waits for LeBlanc to get it. And then he gets it.

‘Tattoos. On the girl and the man. Is that it? The tattoos?’

On the frozen image, a blotch of color is just visible on the girl’s shoulder. It’s almost lost amongst the wounds there. The man’s tattoo, on the back of his lower leg, is more obvious. For one thing, it’s darker, but on this grainy picture it’s still just a blob.

LeBlanc says, ‘I don’t get it. That’s not Megan Hamlyn, and that’s not Proust. They’re just two people with tattoos. What are you telling me here, Cal?’

Doyle swivels the chair to face LeBlanc. ‘Six months before I came to the Eighth, I caught a homicide. A floater in the Hudson.’

He opens up the folder, extracts a large photograph and passes it to LeBlanc. The photo shows the body of a young woman. She is naked. Her body is bloated and mottled, but the numerous injuries it carries are still evident. And, on her shoulder, what looks like a tattoo.

LeBlanc studies the picture, then switches his gaze back and forth between it and the computer screen.

‘Looks like her.’

‘It is her,’ says Doyle. ‘The wounds and the position of the tattoo match up exactly. And before you ask, that’s not just my opinion. It’s also the opinion of a Medical Examiner and an expert in image-comparison techniques.’

‘Okay, so it’s the same girl. Who is she?’

‘Name’s Alyssa Palmer. She disappeared just over a week before she turned up in the river. She was seventeen. Her friends told me she was obsessed with the idea of getting a tattoo, but that her parents wouldn’t let her have one until she was old enough. The day before she went missing she told her best pal that she thought she’d found someone who would do the tattoo for her.’

LeBlanc looks up. ‘And she named Proust?’

Doyle doesn’t answer, because his answer isn’t the one he wishes he could give.

He slides another photograph from the folder and hands it over. ‘This is a close-up of the tattoo.’

LeBlanc studies it. It’s a red-winged butterfly, hovering over a flower. Delicate curling fronds from the plant intertwine above the insect.

‘Nice,’ says LeBlanc. ‘You trace it to Proust?’

Again, another negative that Doyle doesn’t want to voice. ‘We talked to every tattoo artist in the city. A couple of them said it looked like it could be Proust’s work.’

LeBlanc nods. Says, ‘Uh-huh.’ Makes it pretty damn obvious that he doesn’t think it’s a lot to go on. Which, Doyle has to admit, it isn’t.

‘And the other tattoo? The one on the guy’s leg?’

Doyle gives him the next photograph in the sequence. ‘Best we could get.’

It’s a magnified view of the guy’s calf. Unlike blow-ups you see done in TV programs, which magically supply absent detail, this one is highly pixelated. The tattoo consists of a black symbol containing a blurred white smudge at its center.

‘That’s the ace of spades,’ says LeBlanc. He taps the photograph. ‘What’s this in the middle?’

‘We think it could be a skull and crossbones,’ says Doyle, using a plural rather than the more accurate singular pronoun. He watches as LeBlanc squints at the image and makes no attempt to confirm that he sees the piratical symbol too. Doyle wants to snatch the picture back from him and tell him to forget it if that’s going to be his attitude.

Then LeBlanc compounds his error. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because. .’ Doyle begins in a louder than necessary voice. He softens it again. Tries to find some patience for the inexperienced young cop. ‘Because Proust has done a number of tattoos of the ace of spades with a skull and crossbones in the middle. They’re in his books. Okay?’

He glares at LeBlanc, daring him to make further challenges. Keeping suppressed deep within him his knowledge that there is a lot to challenge.

Heedless of the danger, LeBlanc presses on. ‘Hold up. What am I missing here? You have one tattoo that a coupla people say could have been put there by Proust. And you have this other tattoo that might possibly be similar to some others that Proust has done. And this is why you like Proust for two murders?’

And now Doyle does snatch the photograph back. He grabs it back so fast he hopes he gives LeBlanc a paper cut.

‘No. Did you hear me say this was everything?’

‘So, then, what? You pin some forensic evidence on him? Maybe locate the basement in the video?’

None of the above, thinks Doyle. Oh, what he would give for something as concrete as that. And oh, how lame it sounds when his answer leaves his lips:

‘I talked to the guy.’

LeBlanc moves quickly on to his next question, but Doyle sees the irritating flash of disbelief on his face before he does.

‘Proust? What did he say?’

‘He denied everything.’

Thinks Doyle, You just go ahead and say, ‘Okaaay,’ in that long, doubting way again.

‘Ah,’ says LeBlanc. Which is almost as bad. ‘But you caught him out on something. Right?’

Now he’s being patronizing, thinks Doyle. Throwing me a line like that.

‘I told you. I talked to him. I spent hours with that sonofabitch. He did it. I could smell it on him. He killed Alyssa Palmer. And now he’s killed Megan Hamlyn.’

Which, to Doyle, should be an end to it. LeBlanc should shut up now and bow to the wisdom of his older, more experienced partner, and leave it at that.

But he doesn’t.

‘What exactly did Proust do or say? How do you know all this about him?’

Doyle stuffs the photographs back into his folder, then presses the eject button to retrieve his DVD. He gets the computer’s tongue again, the disk still sitting there like a pill it refuses to take.

‘He didn’t exactly do or say anything. It’s a feeling, Tommy. I know this guy. I know what he is. I know what he did.’

LeBlanc thinks about this for a moment. ‘We can’t work on hunches, Cal. We need something more.’

Doyle stands up. ‘For fuck’s sake, do you think I don’t know that? I’m sick of everyone in this damn squad telling me how to work this case. You do what you want, Tommy. I’m going after Proust.’

LeBlanc gets up. ‘Cal, I didn’t mean-’

But Doyle is already out the door. LeBlanc wanted an explanation, and now he’s got it. If he doesn’t like it, he can shove it.

Doyle is getting used to working alone. Even when he has a partner.