The Halo Effect

31

At six-thirty the night maid opened the door to room 1543 in the Pallard Hotel, and within twenty minutes Noah Jordain and his partner were speeding out of Manhattan to the large hotel in nearby Newark, New Jersey, both of them hoping that what they were about to find in that room was not another notch in the belt of the man they referred to as the Magdalene Murderer.

For Jordain, this series of crimes was worse than most, if in fact there could be such degrees of horror when you dealt with the depths of depravity. Not only were they more personally disturbing, but he’d never had such a cold case before. So far forensics hadn’t turned up any serious leads.

The M.E. said the murderer hit the women over the head with a blunt object that was slightly convex. After he knocked them out, he strangled them with latex-sheathed hands. They were the kind of gloves you could buy in any drugstore.

Conjecturing, the M.E. also said he didn’t think the women regained consciousness after they’d been knocked out.

At least there was that-they never knew what happened. So they never knew that once they were dead, the man defiled their bodies, dressed them as nuns and posed them in blasphemous tableaux.

Dozens of people had probably seen the murderer passing through the hotel on his way to his assignations. But to them, he was just one more man in the lobby, in the elevator, in the hall.

“We need to get someone to compare the surveillance tapes from all the different hotels and see if by chance the same face shows up more than once,” Jordain said to his partner as he drove across town.

“Oh, great,” was Perez’s sarcastic response.

It was not going to be easy. All they could do was assume the perp was dressed as a businessman so that he blended in and probably carried a small suitcase that held the nun’s clothing and accessories.

“I know.” Jordain nodded. “It’s not much, but he’s not making any mistakes, and so far the hotel rooms are just too damn full of crap. If he’d only picked more expensive hotels with better surveillance, or if some desk clerk had paid more attention to who’d checked in. Or if someone had had a bedspread washed in the last month…” Jordain let the sentence trail off in frustration. There was no point in going over all the scenarios that could make their job easier. So far, the three crime scenes had offered up such a mess of hair, fiber and prints that the lab had not isolated anything meaningful. Inevitably, the same scenario would be repeated at this newest location.

“He has to make a mistake sooner or later,” was the best Perez could offer.

“I want it sooner, damn it.”

“It sure doesn’t help that he’s killing women no one is watching out for.”

The light changed. Jordain nodded and pressed down on the accelerator.

It was a warm night. Breezy, full moon, not much traffic, the lights of the city sparkling as if it were a magical place full of hope, instead of the terrors that Jordain knew were there. For every light there was a darkness. For every window that blazed there was a man or woman who was capable of slipping from grace into garbage.

The church, his church, the same church that ordained men to spread God’s word and women to do God’s work, said that children were born innocent. But as good a Catholic as Jordain was, he no longer believed that. He had seen too much carnage. And he knew he was about to see more.