Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel (7 page)

Jennings paused and drew a deep breath.

“And that he’s going to kill again, probably after a cooling-off period of twelve to twenty-four months.”

“And the clock is ticking,” Mulligan said.

“Tell me about it.”

“Think this guy Schutter would talk to me?”

“I suppose I could ask.”

*   *   *

The following afternoon, Mulligan and Jennings met Schutter in his room at the Holiday Inn in downtown Providence. The agent’s suitcase was on the bed, packed for his return trip to Washington.

“Detective Jennings tells me you’ve got some questions,” Schutter said.

“I do,” Mulligan said.

“A couple of ground rules first. Number one, anything I tell you must be attributed to an agent for the BSU. I do not want my name used. Number two, there are going to be things I
can’t
tell you. Some details that only the killer could know must be withheld so the police can use them to rule out false confessions.”

“I understand.”

“Okay, then. Ask your questions.”

“First off, I’m wondering why you agreed to talk to me.”

“Our work at the BSU isn’t well understood. Many police departments still are not availing themselves of our expertise. The director thinks the publicity could do some good. Besides, it appears that apprehending this killer will be difficult. The release of certain information might help members of the general public assist investigators with an identification. Detective Jennings says you are a person who can be trusted to keep your word and report on this responsibly.”

“I’ll do my best.” Mulligan pulled out his notebook, where he’d written a short list of things that were puzzling him. “Can you explain why the killer covered the bodies?”

“His motivation isn’t clear, but the
behavior
provides us with clues to his identity. Serial killers who murder strangers almost never cover the bodies. The perpetrator we are seeking not only knew his victims but lives within walking distance of the murder scenes. Killers who live farther away nearly always move the bodies and dump them.”

“One of their
neighbors
did this?”

“There’s a high level of probability.”

“Why would he kill all these people?”

Schutter glanced at Jennings, who was shaking his head vigorously.

“I’m willing to discuss this,” the agent said, “but only off the record. The families of the victims have been through enough. They don’t need to be exposed to the worst of it.”

“Off the record, then,” Mulligan said.

“He kills because it’s how he achieves sexual release.”

“I already gathered that. But how does somebody get that way?”

“Sometime during preadolescence, probably when he was about ten years old, something happened that caused him to equate sex with violence. It could have been an event as simple as idly touching himself while watching slasher movies on TV. Psychologists call it ‘imprinting.’ It’s the same thing that leads some males to associate sex with garter belts or women’s shoes.”

“Movies?” Mulligan said.

“I believe he is obsessed with them. Films like
Friday the Thirteenth
and
A Nightmare on Elm Street
. He sits in front of his TV and masturbates to them.”

Mulligan raised an eyebrow and looked at Jennings.

“We checked all the video stores,” the detective said. “Turns out half the people in town watch that stuff. And if he shoplifted them, there wouldn’t be any purchase or rental records anyway.”

“With slasher films as his inspiration,” Schutter continued, “he built himself a fantasy world. At first, his fantasies would have been simple, but over time they grew more elaborate. At least a year before he killed for the first time, he was stabbing helpless women to death in Technicolor movies that played in a continuous loop inside his head. Eventually, the fantasies were no longer enough to satisfy him. That’s when he made a conscious decision to cross the line between make-believe and murder.”

Schutter paused to allow Mulligan to catch up with his note taking.

“You’d be shocked how many people are walking around with violent fantasies in their heads, imagining how delightful it would be to strangle you or stab you to death,” the agent said. “What separates them from our killer is that most of them never decide to act on it.”

“Good God,” Mulligan said. “I wish you hadn’t told me that. It gives me the creeps.”

“Me too,” Jennings said.

“Why the overkill?” Mulligan asked. “Why did he keep stabbing his victims after they were dead?”

“The females in the killer’s fantasies always cower before his God-like power,” the agent said. “They weep and beg him for mercy. Becky Medeiros didn’t do that. She fought for her life.”

“She spoiled his fantasy,” Mulligan said.

“Yes, and that enraged him.”

“What about the Stuarts?”

“The killer stabbed Connie Stuart twenty-two times and her eight-year-old daughter twelve times, but he plunged knives into the twelve-year-old fifty-two times. That tells us she was the one who fought him the hardest.”

Mulligan felt like throwing up. That reminded him of his last question.

“Why did the killer vomit in the backyard?”

“For the same reason athletes do after running the Boston Marathon—low blood sugar and dehydration. That’s how physically taxing the attack was.”

January 1992

The boy fetches his father’s hatchet from the garage, dashes back into the house, and skips up the stairs to the second floor. He stops in front of his sister’s bedroom door and smirks at the “No Boys Allowed” sign. Then he turns the knob, steps inside, and pulls the door shut behind him.

The bed is covered with a frilly pink comforter and two matching satin pillows. A Michael Jackson poster hangs over the headboard. Beside the maple bureau, its top covered with jars of mysterious girly stuff, stands a bookshelf crammed with Barbie dolls.

Blond Barbies, brunette Barbies, redheaded Barbies. Barbies draped in prom gowns. Barbies stuffed into two-piece bathing suits. Barbies in tight tennis shorts. Barbies in revealing go-go outfits. Barbies in demure nurse’s uniforms. Barbies in colorful summer dresses.

He selects a nurse Barbie, tears off her uniform, and lays her naked on the floor. He studies her for a moment. Then, whack! He chops off her right leg.

He grins, pretending he can hear her scream.

Whack! Her other leg.

Whack! Her right arm.

Whack! Her left arm.

And finally, her head.

He does the same with bathing beauty Barbie.

Then a go-go Barbie.

Then another.

And another.

A half hour later, he sits there with his penis in his hand, surrounded by dismembered dolls in an imaginary pool of blood.

10

July 1994

On the twelfth day after the Stuart murders, Mulligan parked Citation on the street across from the murder house, got out, and started knocking on doors again. He figured he was wasting his time. The police had already talked to everyone in the neighborhood more than once. But he was haunted by what he’d learned from Schutter. He couldn’t sit around doing nothing.

He’d just finished listening to a middle-aged woman prattle about the good-for-nothing police department when he spotted a black teenager riding a bicycle no hands down the middle of the street. It looked like the same kid he’d talked to outside the Medeiros house two years ago. What was his name? Oh, yeah. Kwame something.

“Hey, Kwame!”

The kid rolled up to the curb and braked.

“You’re that reporter.”

“That’s right. Mulligan, from the
Dispatch
.”

“Are the cops ever gonna catch the guy or what?” Kwame asked. “My mom’s really scared.”

“They’re doing the best they can,” Mulligan said.

The kid had grown several inches since he’d last seen him. And he had a gauze bandage on his right thumb.

“So, Kwame. How’d you hurt your thumb?”

“A dog bit me.”

“That right?”

“Uh-huh.”

Mulligan reached for the hand. The kid jerked it back.

Mulligan grabbed for it again and ripped the bandage off. Underneath was a clean, two-inch cut closed by what appeared to be eight or ten stitches.

“That’s no dog bite,” Mulligan said.

“The hell it ain’t.” The boy threw him a defiant glare. “You’re just hassling me ’cause I’m black.”

“Look, kid. The cops think the person who killed your neighbors cut himself in the attack. If you hurt your hand breaking into a house or something, I don’t give a shit. Just tell me the truth, okay?”

“I won’t get in any trouble?”

“That’s right.”

Kwame looked up at the sky as if he were thinking it over—or maybe making something up.

“A week ago, when I was riding my bike, I saw this car that had a CD player sitting on the front seat. I been wanting one, you know. So I broke the car window with a rock and took it.”

“And you cut your hand on the glass?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout cars.”

“Was it an old one?” Mulligan asked. Window glass in newer models would have shattered into harmless pellets.

“I don’t remember.”

“Where did this happen, exactly?”

“Corner of Gordon and Taplow over by Oakland Beach Elementary.”

“Okay, then. That explains it.”

“Can I go?”

“One last thing. What’s your shoe size?”

“Ten,” the kid said.

The reporter slid his foot next to the kid’s. Mulligan’s Reeboks were size eleven. Kwame’s Nikes were bigger.

Mulligan watched the kid pedal down the street. Then he strolled to his car, drove to Gordon and Taplow, and scanned the pavement for broken glass. He even got down on his knees to search.

He didn’t find any.

Mulligan drove to the Warwick police station and checked the reports to see if someone had complained about a car being vandalized near the school. No one had.

He walked upstairs to the detective bureau and asked for Jennings.

*   *   *

“You think a
child
could have done this?”

“I think it’s worth checking out.”

“Come on, Mulligan. You heard the FBI profile. The guy we’re looking for is in his mid- to late twenties. Besides, the kid you’re talking about is black.”

“Black? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Black serial killers are extremely rare. And they only kill other black people.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Andy, but would it hurt to run this by Schutter and see what he says?”

*   *   *

It took them ten minutes to make their way through the FBI phone tree and get the BSU agent on speakerphone.

“This kid is
how
old?” the agent asked.

“Fifteen,” Jennings said.

“He would have been thirteen at the time of the Medeiros murder?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, Detective. The bureau has compiled detailed files on hundreds of serial killers. The youngest one we ever encountered started killing at seventeen. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them were at least twenty-one, and the average age at first kill is twenty-eight and a half.”

“Maybe so,” Mulligan butted in, “but if Diggs isn’t involved, why the lies about his shoe size and the cut on his hand?”

“He could be covering for something worse than breaking a car window,” Schutter said. “Perhaps a housebreak or a robbery.”

“Or murder,” Mulligan said.

Schutter had nothing to say to that.

“Something else about the kid is nagging at me,” Mulligan said. “The footprints in the Medeiros house were size twelve, but the ones at the Stuart house were size thirteen. Unless we’re looking for two different guys, which you say we’re not, our killer is still growing.”

“I wouldn’t put any stock in that,” Schutter said. “Prints made by stocking feet can be deceptive.”

“In what way?”

“They vary in size depending on whether the socks are loose or pulled on tight. No way this kid’s your killer. Don’t waste your time on him.”

*   *   *

After they hung up, Mulligan pulled out a cigar and set fire to it.

“Not supposed to smoke in here,” Jennings said. Then he shrugged, slipped a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket, and got one going.

“I still think it’s worth looking into, Andy.”

“Tell you what. After we finish recanvassing for the third friggin’ time, I’ll talk to the kid, see what he has to say. And Mulligan?”

“Yeah?”

“Stay the hell away from him and leave the investigation to the professionals.”

“Whatever you say.”

*   *   *

As he drove to work the next morning, Mulligan couldn’t get Kwame Diggs out of his head. Before checking in at the sports desk, he decided to talk things over with the city editor.

“Schutter is full of shit,” Lomax said.

“How so?”

“Ever heard of Tommy Knox?”

“Knox? Who’s he?”

“Back in the 1960s, he was the starting fullback for the Tolman High School football team in Pawtucket. He was also a psychopath. He raped and murdered two women and badly injured a third; and he was the prime suspect in two other sex killings.”

“How old was he?”

“Eighteen when they caught him, but when he killed his first victim, he was only fifteen years old.”

“Where is he now?”

“He committed suicide in prison.”

“The BSU didn’t get started until the 1970s,” Mulligan said.

“Yeah,” Lomax said. “That’s why Schutter never heard about this.”

11

That afternoon, Mulligan braced teenage boys in Kwame Diggs’s neighborhood, asking if they knew how he’d hurt his hand. He drew a blank until, around suppertime, he stumbled onto Eddie Hendricks.

He was fourteen. A friend of Kwame’s. The two of them, he told Mulligan, liked to play touch football in the street.

“Any idea how he cut his thumb?”