When he spotted the house he had a mental flash of the iconic photographs that would blanket the world should it prove to be the place where the killer was captured. Doomsday House. A modest 1940s-era two-story dwelling with warping shingles, chipped shutters and a sagging porch with a couple of bicycles, plastic chairs and a grill. There was no yard to speak of-a spitter with good lung power could lean out the windows and hit the houses on either side and to the rear. There was just enough paved space for two cars-a beige Honda Civic was crammed between the house and the neighbor’s chain-link fence and older red BMW 3-series was parked between the porch and the sidewalk, where a patch of grass might otherwise have been.
He wearily checked his watch. It was already a long day and it wasn’t going to end anytime soon. He might not get a drink for hours and he resented the deprivation. Still, how superb would it be to wrap the case up here and now and coast to retirement, reliably hitting the barstool by 5:30 every night? He quickened his pace at the thought, forcing Nancy into a trot. “You ready to rock and roll?” he called out.
Before she could answer, a babelicious reporter from Channel Four recognized him from the news conference and shouted to her cameraman, “To your right! It’s the Pied Piper!” The video cam swung in his direction. “Agent Piper! Can you confirm that the Doomsday Killer has been captured?” Instantly, every videographer followed suit and he and Nancy were surrounded by a baying pack.
“Just keep walking,” he hissed, and Nancy tucked in behind and let him plow through the scrum.
The kill zone was in their faces the instant they walked inside. The front room was a bloody mess. It was taped off, perfectly preserved, and Will and Nancy had to peer through the open door as if they were viewing a cordoned museum exhibit. The body of a thin open-eyed man was half-on, half-off a yellow love seat. His head was lying on an armrest, well and truly caved in, his brown hair and scalp cleaved, a crescent of dura mater glistening in the last golden rays of the sun. His face, or rather, what was left of it, was a swollen pulpy mess with exposed shards of ivory bone and cartilage. Both his arms had been shattered into sickeningly unnatural anatomical positions.
He read the room like a manuscript-red splatter all over the paint, teeth scattered on the carpet like popcorn from a messy party-and he concluded that the sofa was where the man had died but not where the attack had begun. The victim had been standing near the door when the first strike landed, an upwardly arcing swing that glanced off his skull and splashed blood onto the ceiling. He had been struck again and again as he reeled and spun around the room, unsuccessfully fending off a hail of blows from a blunt instrument. He had not gone easily, this one. Will tried to interpret the eyes. He had seen that wide-eyed stare countless times. What was the final emotion? Fear? Anger? Resignation?
Nancy was drawn to another detail in the diorama. “You see that?” she asked. “On the desk. I think it’s the postcard.”
The Commanding Officer of the precinct was a young turk, a spit-and-polish captain named Brian Murphy. His athletic chest proudly bulged under his crisply-ironed blue shirt as he introduced himself. This was a career-altering collar for him, and the deceased, one John William Pepperdine, surely would have been irritated at how much ebullience his passing had engendered in this policeman.
On their drive over, he and Nancy had fretted about the 45th Precinct trampling another crime scene but they needn’t have, because Murphy had taken personal charge of this one. Fat, sloppy Detective Chapman was nowhere to be seen. He complimented the captain on his forensic awareness and it had the same effect as stroking a mutt while cooing “good dog.” Murphy was now his friend for life and he giddily briefed them how his officers, responding to a neighbor’s 911 about shouts and screams, had discovered the body and the postcard and how one of his sergeants had spotted the blood-soaked perpetrator, Luis Camacho, wedged behind the oil tank in the basement. The guy wanted to confess on the spot and Murphy had the good sense to videotape him waiving his Miranda rights and giving his statement in a dull monotone. As Murphy disdainfully put it, it was a fruit-on-fruit crime.
Will listened calmly but Nancy was impatient. “Did he confess to the others, the other murders?”
“To be honest with you, I didn’t go there,” Murphy said. “I left that for you guys. You want to see him?”
“As soon as we can,” he said.
“Follow me.”
Will smiled. “He’s still here?” Instant gratification.
“I wanted to make it easy for you. You didn’t want to go hauling around the Bronx, did you?”
“Captain Murphy, you are a fucking all-star,” he said.
“Feel free to share your opinion with the Commissioner,” Murphy suggested.
The first thing he noticed about Luis Camacho was that he was a dead-match of their physical composite: dark-skinned, average height, slight build, around 160 pounds. He could tell from the stiffening of her lips that Nancy pegged him too. He was sitting at the kitchen table, hands cuffed behind his back, tremulous, his jeans and swooshed Just Do It T-shirt starched with dry blood. Oh, he did it, all right, he thought. Look at this guy, wearing another man’s blood like something out of a tribal ritual.
The kitchen was tidy and cutesy, a collection of whimsical cookie jars, pasta shapes in acrylic tubes, place mats with hot-air balloons, a baker’s rack stacked with floral china. Very domesticated, very gay, Will thought. He loomed over Luis until the man reluctantly locked eyes.
“Mr. Camacho, my name is Special Agent Piper and this is Special Agent Lipinski. We’re with the FBI and we need to ask you some questions.”
“I already told the cops what I did,” Luis said just above a whisper.
Will was redoubtable in interrogation. He used his tough-guy size to threaten then counterbalanced it with a soothing tone and gentle Southern drawl. The subject was never completely sure what he was up against and Will used that as a weapon. “We appreciate that. It’s definitely going to make things easier for you. We just want to broaden the investigation.”
“You mean the postcard John got? Is that what you mean by broaden?”
“That’s right, we’re interested in the postcard.”
Luis shook his head mournfully and tears started streaming. “What’s going to happen to me?”
Will asked one of the cops flanking Luis to wipe his face with a tissue.
“Ultimately, that’ll be up to a jury, but if you keep on cooperating with the investigation, I believe that’s going to have a positive impact on the way things play out. I know you already talked to these officers but I’d appreciate it if you’d start off by telling us about your relationship with Mr. Pepperdine and then tell us what happened here today.”
He let him talk freely, tweaking the direction from time to time while Nancy took her usual notes. They had met in 2005 in a bar. Not a gay bar but they had found each other efficiently enough and they had started dating, the temperamental Puerto Rican flight attendant from Queens and the emotionally-blocked Episcopalian bookstore owner from City Island. John Pepperdine had inherited this comfortable green house from his parents and he had let a succession of boyfriends move in with him over the years. With his 40th birthday in the rearview mirror, John had told friends that Luis was his last great love, and he had been correct.
Their relationship had been tempestuous, infidelity an ongoing theme. John had demanded monogamy, Luis was incapable. John regularly accused him of cheating but Luis’s job, with its constant travel to Vegas, carried a certain carte blanche. Luis had flown home the evening before but rather than return to City Island, he went to Manhattan with a businessman he had met on the flight who bought him an expensive meal and took him home to Sutton Place. Luis had crawled into John’s bed at four A.M. and didn’t awake until one that afternoon. Hung over, he had shakily descended the stairs to make a pot of coffee, expecting to have the house to himself.