The man reaches beneath the chair and comes up holding a bottle. He unscrews the cap and pours a clear liquid all over the woman’s breasts. She struggles but can’t break free.
Murphy felt his stomach twist. “He’s not going to burn her, is he?”
After the man sets the bottle down, he spends half a minute fondling the woman’s breasts. She fights so hard she almost knocks the chair over.
Not one of the detectives, all of whom were certified perverts, made so much as an admiring sound at the sight of the half-naked woman.
The man pulls the knife free from the chair and cuts through a strip of tape around the woman’s neck. He grabs the top of her hood and with a dramatic flourish rips it off her head. “Guess who?” he says. The woman’s face is a tear-stained, snot-crusted mask of terror.
Murphy leaned closer to the screen. “I don’t get it. Who is she?”
“Wait,” Garcia said.
The masked man rests his chin on the woman’s left shoulder. Her eyes are wide with fear and bright white through the green fog of the infrared light. She is hyperventilating, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Tell them your name, honey?” the man taunts.
She tries to catch her breath but can’t.
As if by magic, the stun gun appears above her right shoulder. “Go ahead, my little princess, tell them your name.” He triggers the stun gun, causing a flash and a brief whiteout of the screen.
When the image returns, the woman faces the camera, but her eyes are looking hard left, at the masked face of her tormentor.
“Tell them your name,” he screams.
“My name is Kiesha.”
“Kiesha what?”
“Kiesha Guidry.”
“And who’s your daddy?” the masked man asks in a taunting, singsong voice.
“He’s… he’s the mayor of New Orleans.”
“Holy shit,” Murphy said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sunday, August 5, 10:00 AM
The killer rolls a plain sheet of white paper into his twenty-five-dollar pawnshop typewriter. His gloved hands pause over the keyboard for a moment as he gathers his thoughts. Then he begins to type. Dear times-pikayune Editor: This is the Lamb of God. you disobeyyed me and have reaped the consequences. do not repeat your error, or i shall repeat your punishment. As of this writing the mayor’s daughter is alive, though I WILL NOT say SHE IS well. I have decided to ‘keep’ her for a time. pleese assuure THE MAYOR that i can ‘get it up.’ detektive murphhy will not ketch me. TOO BAD FOR HIM. From the press reports, i rather like him. in some respects he is like me. BE ASSURRED my work-the lord’S work, the god of blood and fire-will continue until i/we have purged this city of its harlotts, sodomittes, scoundrells, and scallywaggs. i will save this city even if i have to burn it to the grounnd. Print this letter on the front page or i will… well, you can guess what i’ll do. your humble servant, log. p.s. want to know a sekret? I killed two SODOMITES in the fq more than a year ago. p.p.s. any luck on the cypher? ha, ha.
The killer pulls the letter from the typewriter and lays it on his desk. He folds it in thirds. From a box at his feet he removes a plain envelope and rolls it into the typewriter. His fingers pound out the Howard Avenue address of the Times-Picayune. Then he slips the letter into the envelope. Beneath the flap is a self-adhesive strip. He peels the covering from the strip and seals the envelope.
On a whim, the killer decides to deliver the letter in person. The post office is closed on Sundays. If he puts the letter in a mailbox today, it will not be delivered until Tuesday. That means the newspaper could not publish it until Wednesday.
Tomorrow, the story of his second video will be splashed across the front page. He wants his letter to run beside that story.
Today’s paper carries a banner headline about the killer’s first video. He has circled the newspaper’s descriptive adjectives in red: shocking… outrageous… brutal… vile… disgusting.
The Sunday edition also contains several follow-up articles about the fire that focus on what the editors consider the heroic tales of survival and the heart-wrenching stories of the sodomites who perished.
Sickening, the killer thinks.
He enjoyed the profile in yesterday’s paper of Detective Sean Murphy, his resolute pursuer. What must he be like? the killer wonders. What motivates him? What drives him?
The killer considers his letter. Did he give away too much by mentioning the sodomites in the French Quarter last year? No, he thinks. The news will only serve to further confuse the already-confounded investigators.
All except Detective Murphy, perhaps. He seems a tad sharper than the rest, though not much. They are all quite the lot of dullards, but Murphy may merit some extra attention. The forces that drive killers may not be unlike the forces that drive those who hunt them.
Shakespeare was right. Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
The killer walks to his closet. He dons a wide-brimmed straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt, then checks himself in the mirror above his dresser.
The newspaper offices will be less crowded today. Surely, the administrative and clerical staffs and the advertising people must have Sundays off. He expects only a skeleton crew of reporters and editors.
“You’re going in there and talk to the press,” Captain Donovan said.
Murphy was slumped in a chair in front of Donovan’s desk. His head was spinning but not from the booze. It was spinning because of the unbelievable turn of events of the last hour. He had walked into the Homicide office expecting to be arrested for murder. Now he was being told he was going to brief the press about the kidnapping of the mayor’s daughter, something he had not even known about until a few minutes ago.
“Why me?” Murphy asked.
“This fucking asshole just kidnapped the mayor’s daughter,” Donovan shouted. “And now, thanks to you, the press knows that same asshole set the fire at the gay bar.”
Murphy sat up. Despite his spinning head, despite Marcy Edwards, despite everything, this accusation was making him mad. It couldn’t go unchallenged. “I didn’t tell Kirsten Sparks or anyone else about the killer’s connection to the fire. Call her and ask her yourself.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“We have a rule here, Murphy. Cops don’t talk to the press without prior approval. Period.”
Murphy kept his mouth shut. There was nothing he could say that would convince Donovan he was telling the truth.
The captain leaned over his desk. “Get this straight. I want you out of my division, out of this bureau, and off the goddamn job, but I can’t do any of that right now because we have a psycho running loose in this city who just committed the biggest mass murder in history. Then he played Al-Qaeda and chopped off a woman’s head on fucking TV. Then he snatched the mayor’s daughter. All that in just two days. The public and the press want answers, and you’re the head of the task force we created to catch this sick fuck. And to top it all off, we’re about to have another fucking Katrina.”
Donovan jumped to his feet and jabbed a finger at his office door. “Now, I want you to walk out there, stand in front of those reporters, and deliver some kind of statement that doesn’t make us look like Barney fucking Fife is leading the Keystone fucking Cops.”
Murphy stood and walked out.
Behind him, Donovan shouted, “It’s going to be carried live, so don’t fuck it up.”
The makeshift press-briefing room was set up in the police academy’s main classroom. On the way there, Murphy stopped in the squad room. He found Gaudet at his desk.
“Captain chew your ass?” Gaudet asked.
Murphy nodded.
“Where the hell were you?”
“I spent yesterday afternoon at the clerk’s office trying to find links between the victims,” Murphy said. “Then I went to the Records Division. Then I went home. I needed a break, so I turned off my radio and my phone. You disappear all the time and nobody says shit. Why is it such a big fucking deal when I do it?”