"You've handled worse, Keith. You'll survive it."
"The mayor thinks that he and I have got our own little town, and that we run it side by side. Only I have all the same problems he's got- plus a few more of my own-and I'm the one who gets none of the ribbon cutting." His ice blue eyes were fiery and his short hair seemed to bristle.
"Every one of my employees has a gun. Every one of them. I've even got to worry that a few may have-what's the politically correct jargon?-'emotional issues.' That one of mine might have been the guy taking potshots up at the range yesterday," Scully said. "Yes, Alex, I know all about it. We're checking into our loose cannons and the ones who've been discharged or sent out to pasture."
"I didn't mean to make-"
"There are union reps at all of my job sites. You think that doesn't add to my aggravation? And within my patrol territory I'm responsible for airports and churches, schools and opera houses, crack dens and sports arenas, housing projects and penthouse palaces."
He poked his chest with his forefinger. "When people feel threatened, when they think their loved ones aren't safe, then it's my problem, Ray. Then I own it, all by myself, 24/7."
None of us spoke. Scully's direction was clear.
Peterson lit another cigarette. "You're just feeding the beast, you know. They devour the headlines, Keith. You study these guys, the serial killers who wind up in prison, and they've all got scrapbooks. They like making news. They get off on reading their own ink."
"So does Coop. Doesn't make her a bad person."
"That's always the balance, isn't it, Ray?" Scully said, ignoring Mike's shot. "We've been lucky that Bristol and Huff didn't get much attention. That all changes with Connie Wade. The governor's going public at six o'clock tonight. He's got the perfect victim and he wants to take the lead."
"So what did the mayor say?"
Scully laughed in spite of himself. "He wants me in the blue room at five."
"Whatever happened to the old 'wait and see' attitude?" Peterson asked. "Used to be a valued principle in policing, back in the day. Don't rile the public. Figure the killer will get tired of the high cost of living in the big city and move on. Become someone else's headache. Seems like this character's already moving upstate."
"And there's a gubernatorial primary the second week in September," Scully said. "Nobody wants to sit on a political hot potato."
Peterson opened the foil on a turkey sandwich and handed me half. "Give the man what he needs, Mike. You two have anything to contribute," he said to Mercer and me, "feel free to jump in."
"What do we know about Connie Wade?" Scully asked.
Mike read her physical description from the notes he'd taken in his first phone conversation and our meeting with Bart Hinson. He outlined what he knew about her background and family, where she had traveled from and when she had last contacted relatives and friends. He described the injuries and the manner in which they were similar to Amber and Elise's.
"Elise Huff," Scully said, scanning the police reports. "Have you made any progress finding this guy she was supposed to meet?"
"No, sir. The bar car's going to give me some help this evening," Mike said, referring to the detectives assigned to check on all the establishments that sell liquor and are licensed by the SLA. "I hit a few clubs near the Pioneer last night but came up empty."
"I don't need another disappearing act tonight. I want every young lady who goes out on the town for a cocktail to come home safe. Troopers still waiting on confirmation about what Connie Wade was wearing?"
"They're thinking uniform. Fits in with the whole military fixation this guy has."
Scully was back to Elise Huff. "And Huff, in this airline outfit, you think it could have fooled a guy who knows his stuff?"
Mike scoffed at the suggestion. "What? Like it was real military gear? No way. I'm assuming he knows better. She had on a neat white blouse, wings on the collar, and navy pants with a crease up the leg. But our killer wouldn't be thinking wild blue yonder."
"Don't forget she had that ring of her grandmother's she always wore," Mercer said. "Her best friend claims she's a storyteller, commissioner. Maybe our perv recognized the ring and knew what it meant. If the perp makes his pickup in a bar, maybe she told him she had a West Point connection."
"I'm willing to buy that," Peterson said. "But Amber Bristol, I don't see how she fits with these other two girls. I like the manner of death and the cuffs and the remote dump, but there's nothing military about her."
"What's Herb Ackerman's condition?" Scully asked. "Maybe he can establish a connection."
"They wouldn't let me back at him yesterday," Mike said. "Still too groggy from the overdose. Mercer and I will put him on our list for tomorrow. I gotta be honest with you, sir, he doesn't strike me as recruit material for Parris Island."
"I've met the man, Chapman. I don't see him rowing a body out in the middle of the Hudson, either-"
"Not without really shitting in his pants, sir."
"Let's see how long it takes these investigative journalists to sniff out their own. I'll be leaving his involvement out of the news bulletin. But Ackerman was a war correspondent in Vietnam. Read his columns sometime. He knows as much about our armed forces-and weaponry- as anybody in the media. I'm just looking for connections here," Scully said, listing commands for us to follow. "Find out who does Ackerman's research, who edits his copy. What led him to write about the ferry terminal. Maybe he's got a young buff on staff-somebody who knows his secret. We don't even have Amber's client list. Don't even know if this freak is in her little black book. And how about that bar owner? Amber's boyfriend."
"Jim Dylan. That's still a work in progress. He looked good to me before we found Huff's body. I haven't given up the idea that he hired someone to get rid of Amber."
With us all trailing, Keith Scully went back to his office and stacked the Bristol and Huff case reports next to each other on his desk, then began a third pile with his pages of notes about Connie Wade. He pursed his lips and shook his head. "Yeah, well he's damn unlucky if the guy he hired can't turn off the faucet when he's in the mood to kill."
"I haven't mentioned Amber Bristol's superintendent, Keith," Peterson said. "He's dirty. Has a couple of assaults he got walked out of court on. Beats his woman."
"Bring him back in," Scully said, then pointed to Guido Lentini. "Be sure to get details on the old cases for the mayor."
"Commissioner Scully," I said, replaying in my mind each conversation I'd had about these women, "do you have the report Mike wrote up based on my interview with Herb Ackerman? It was Wednesday morning, before I went to court."
He licked his thumb and looked through the dates on the top of each page. The image Herb Ackerman painted came back to me faster than the police commissioner could pull it up on paper.
"Amber Bristol," I said. "The night she walked out of Ackerman's office she was wearing a new outfit. She looked just like the captain of a ship, he told me. White cotton, double-breasted jacket. It was trimmed with gold buttons and epaulets, with some gold braid on the shoulders."
"That doesn't make her an admiral," Mike said, blowing me off.
Ray Peterson crushed his cigarette against the sole of his shoe. "I see where you're going."
"Could be what turns the perp on, Commissioner, is women in uniform," I said. "Not authentic, not armed services for real, but just the look of it. He's a sexual psychopath, guys. Maybe all it takes to trigger his sadistic urge is the sight of a woman in uniform.
TWENTY-THREE
What you know about serial killers couldn't fill a thimble, Chapman." Dickie Draper had arrived twenty minutes later and joined us in the conference room.