Gladyss of the Hunt (14 page)

“I'm sorry, I wasn't planning on bothering you until after the affair, but my personal assistant just called me and I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

On her desk was a huge flat screen hooked up to a tiny, shiny laptop. She clicked the Internet icon and in a moment we were on her Marilyn Monroe web site.

“Did Noel tell you anything?”

“He mentioned you managed a web site.”

“Yes. Well, just in the past few days I've been getting these poetically threatening emails.”

“Poetically threatening?” The phrase sounded oxymoronic.

“I can't think of another way to describe them, really. So I called Noel, only because he played a police detective so convincingly.”

“So someone is threatening you?”

“Actually they were addressed to Marilyn.”

“Okay,” I said with a slight grin. Since Marilyn Monroe had been dead for over forty years, the whole thing sounded ludicrous. I tried to think of some consoling response.

“The thing is, the threat seems to be escalating. My assistant just found these awful pictures. That's why I pulled you out of the party.”

“Violent pictures?”

“Well that's the thing, I'm not sure if they're real or if they're pranks. Knowing how far special effects have evolved, I fear this whole thing might just be some macabre joke. And I certainly don't
want to waste the police's time.” She smiled awkwardly.

“You're such a dear,” I said, expecting to see a couple of jpegs that some pimple-faced geek probably downloaded from an internet F/X magazine web site.

In a few seconds the first picture appeared on the screen: it showed a woman with curly blonde hair lying on her back—alive, but drowsy looking. She wore bright red lipstick and little else. In the second picture, I could just make out a pair of gloved hands around her neck. The woman's eyes were focused in terror and her mouth was wide open. gasping. In the third photo, her eyelids were semi-closed, her mouth hung loose, drool was visible. She appeared to be dead. In the fourth photo, the gloved hands were shoving a long fish knife into her right breast. In the fifth, they were cutting off her left breast, severing it from the body. By the sixth photo I could feel my heart beating: both breasts had been cleanly amputated. I let out a gasp when I saw the next picture. The woman's limbs had clearly been taped together and pointed upward. It was definitely our guy. The final photo was a close-up: the pointy tip of his long knife was carving a line into one of the vic's soft white limbs—it was the number 1.

“I think the girl is supposed to be Marilyn Monroe,” Miriam broke the silence.

“God.” I felt nauseous and sucked in a deep breath. The long day had finally caught up with me. “Show me those email threats you got.”

Miriam explained that they weren't quite threats. They had been posted on her web site's “poetry page” over a period of days. Each of the poems was more violent and weirder than the last. She was about to show them to me, but before she could start typing, I stopped her and asked if there was any danger of deleting anything.

“No,” she said: the images were saved both to her hard drive and a zip disk. As she typed some commands into her computer, she explained, “It started a week ago. And though I really didn't care for their tone, I'm not a control freak. But then as they started getting uglier I removed them from the site, I saved copies in a separate file, though. Then my assistant, Bryce, saw that we had just received these awful pictures, and they came from the same email address.

“When did Bryce discover these latest pictures?” I asked.

“About twenty minutes ago.”

“And what's the sender's email address?”

“Cathy something. I didn't recognize it.”

“Have you ever gotten into a fight with a Cathy about Marilyn.” She immediately started shaking her head no, so I kept adding on questions, “Is there anyone you can think of who knows you and is nuts, or violent, or perhaps just an ex-con?”

“The only felons I know are tax cheats,” she said just as the first poem popped up on the screen:

         
Eminem thinks he's got ma grief
,

         
least his stinkin ma didn't cut & leave
,

         
Marmalyn claimed I was a spleenectomy
,

         
yet her suicide

                
was a wreck to me
,

         
Now it's my turn to cleave
,

         
& yours to be bereaved
.

“What do you think this spleenectomy refers to?” I asked Miriam. A slim, sandy haired lad was standing behind her, the aforementioned personal assistant Bryce.

“Marilyn had a spleenectomy,” she replied. “Actually a jpeg came with that poem too.” She pressed some keys and an image was displayed.

When it did, I gasped. It was the mug shot photo of Denise Giantonni—victim number two. It was the photo that had run in the papers when she died, but the image had been defaced. Colored markers had been used on the black-and white photo to give her big red lips and turn her short curly hair yellow. She had been Marilynized.

“Do you know her?” Miriam asked.

“She was one of our victims,” I answered curtly. With Noel behind me, I didn't even want to talk about the case.

Underneath the photo was another poem:

         
GLAD IT'S US

         
Marmalyn, you left me to die
,

         
Just like she did you
,

         
Why oh why?

         
Boo hoo! Boo hoo!

         
Cruel world, bye, bye
.

Underneath was the email address:
[email protected]
.

I felt a chill crawl down my spine as I read the title: Gladyss was my name, after all. As if sensing my fear, Miriam hastily said, “Marilyn Monroe's mother's name was Gladys—she was psychotic, and died some time in the 1980s.”

“I'm relieved to hear it.”

“Here's the first poem that actually suggested violence,” Miriam remarked, scrolling downward:

         
On this e-altar, this cyber tomb
,

         
I leave my sacrifices

         
to your cold womb
,

         
There might be no pardoning for what I do
,

         
but who will, or ever can, forgive you?

It was also from CathyofAlexandria.

“The whole thing might be a hoax,” repeated Miriam.

I had my doubts. The mug shot of victim number two, Denise Giantonni, was definitely real, and the latest photo of the blonde-haired vic with the dissected chest was more than enough.

Even though he was probably passed out at some bar, I called Bernie on his cell. The phone rang six times then went to his voice mail. I called a second and then a third time before he finally picked up with the salutation: “What the fuck now?”

“Did I wake you?”

“No,” he grumbled, “I didn't want to pick up 'cause I'm driving to a crime scene in midtown. Our boy struck again.”

“Are the vic's breasts severed but her head's still attached?”

“How the fuck did you know that!”

“I'm at a party just off the park. The hostess has a web site and somebody posted the photos on it. They're of the murder as it was happening.”

“Then that's part of the crime scene. Your job is to protect it till we get there.”

“It's a web site on the internet,” I explained. “But she said she'd backed it up onto her hard drive.”

“Just stay with that computer until I get some uniforms there to take it to the precinct. Write out a precise description of the item and give her a voucher. Tell her we're going to need it for the investigation.”

“Will do.”

“Also, if she can print up whatever pictures and stuff you got and bring it in, that'll help.”

“Gotcha.”

“And tell the hostess she can't use the site with any computer until the techies have checked it out. We don't want any contamination.”

“Okeydoke.”

“In fact when the uniforms get there, join me at the new crime scene.”

“Where?”

“The Ticonderoga.” He gave me the address.

“So he finally made his move,” I said, “and it wasn't at either of the two hotels you staked out.”

“Rub it in, why don't ya. The good news is, it looks like we finally have his fucking face on tape. The Ticonderoga has a surveillance camera in the lobby.”

When I hung up, I explained to Miriam that another murder had just been reported and it looked like the victim might be the girl in her photos.

“You mean this is
real!
”

“Afraid so.”

She was stunned. I added that unfortunately we were going to have to take her computer as evidence. She pursed her lips tensely and said she understood, but asked if she could copy some files from it first. She swore they weren't related to the site; they were for her upcoming trip to Europe. I told her that was fine. When she was done, she was about to unplug the laptop when I asked her if she could first print up the poems and pictures she had shown me.

Using her color printer, she made a hard copy of everything and slipped it into a manila envelope for me. She then went to a nearby closet and retrieved the box the computer had come in, along with the Styrofoam packing.

“The password to the web site is ‘Jean Norma',” she said as she unplugged various cables from the laptop and carefully loaded it into the manufacturer's box. “It's the reverse of Marilyn's real name, Norma Jean.”

“You understand that you mustn't access the web site until one of our technicians has checked it out and given you the all clear,” I clarified.

“Of course.”

I wrote down my name and the extension of the homicide squad handling this case. “If you need anything . . .”

“If you have any questions for me,” she replied, “please call me in the next two days. I'm leaving for the Florence Film Festival on Thursday.”

I thanked her, and she returned to her fabulous party. Assuming he might be worried about me, I called O'Ryan on her phone.

“You're home early.” He sounded bored. His TV was on in the background.

“I'm still at the party, but there's been another murder.”

“Which means I was right. It isn't Noel Holden.”

“Well, I'm still going to check him out.”

Before we could talk any further, one of the butlers escorted a pair of uniformed cops into the study. I pointed to the packed box, which they picked up. I wanted to grab a ride with them, but I'd lost Noel in the crowd and didn't feel right leaving without saying goodbye, so I told the uniforms to go ahead. No sooner had they gone then Noel reappeared.

“There's been another murder.”

“No!”

“Yeah, I have to leave immediately.” I said. Noel walked me through the party, into the elevator, and down to the lobby, where he had the doorman hail a cab that he put me in.

“If it's still early when you're done, give me a call.”

I told him I would and thanked him for a great time. He gave me a peck on the cheek and the cab sped downtown.

CHAPTER SEVEN

As I headed to the crime scene I couldn't stop thinking that this was just too much of a coincidence. Some vast and mystical force must have shepherded me to Miriam Williams' party to receive these photos of the murder via her web site. Was it the power of the Kundalini that the Renunciate had been helping me channel? I started to breathe deeply, inviting its endless possibilities.

At Fortieth Street, still four blocks shy of my destination, traffic slowed to a halt. Though it was cold out, I paid the meter and walked down Lexington the rest of the way. The Ticonderoga Hotel was across from the Soldiers' and Sailors' Club, and down from a church soup kitchen. This place was outside our killer's usual hunting ground. The hotel was also of better quality than his prior dives.

There were so many cops around that unless you were showing a badge you couldn't even get on the block. Two TV vans were already parked across the street, with their microwave dish antennas and film crews setting up outside. A huge Irish cop named Matt Pattingly stood like a superhero in the lobby. All he needed was a cape. The clerk on duty was a woman with a beehive hairdo and tortoiseshell glasses on a chain around her neck. She was being interviewed by Annie.