The Way You Look Tonight (15 page)

‘Both, please.’ Stella pushed the files a little further away. ‘I’ve studied a lot of historical psychopathic killer cases,’ she said slowly. ‘Most have had
elements of sadism, often sexual sadism, but
this
. . . be honest, Lee, have
you
come across one as bad as this before?’

He shook his head. ‘If I’m honest, no. Most of the crazies I’ve chased down, or read about, are more jazzed up about the actual killing part, you know? But like you say, our
man here seemingly puts it off for as long as he can manage. For him, it’s all about the pain, and inflicting it for as long as possible. I think their deaths are almost an annoying
inconvenience to him. Obviously the dagger to the eye isn’t meant to kill; they’re already dead. It’s his flourish. Have you got to the part about the fingerprints yet?’

‘No, but I already know he doesn’t use gloves or make any attempt to wipe his prints from the scene.’ Stella reached for the file again.

‘Don’t bother; I’ll spare you the trouble. His dabs are all over the knives – well, their handles, anyway; they’re automatically wiped off the blades when he stabs
the girls. He just doesn’t care.’

‘Isn’t that a bit odd?’

‘Yup. Even with crimes of passion you usually find some attempt to wipe prints afterwards. But these aren’t crimes of passion, are they? They’re more like surgical procedures,
meticulously planned from start to finish. Yet this fingerprint business is unbelievably sloppy and careless. I can’t begin to work out what the guy’s playing at.’

Stella looked thoughtful. She absent-mindedly tapped out a cigarette from the pack on the table beside her and lit it. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Lee,’ she said suddenly, ‘I
didn’t offer you one.’

He waved the pack away. ‘Not right now, thanks. But I’m glad you’ve started calling me Lee.’

‘What? Oh . . . yes, of course . . . now, these prints. Presumably no one’s found a match for them yet.’

‘Not in police records down here in the Keys, Miami, or Southern Florida, no. Obviously we’re spreading the search.’

‘Hmm.’ Stella blew out smoke, shaking her head as she did so. ‘I’ll bet you won’t find anything, however much further afield you look.’

Foster raised an eyebrow. ‘You sound very sure.’

‘I’m sorry, but I think it’s rather obvious. Leaving prints like this is so completely out of kilter with all the rest of it, isn’t it? I propose that we assume our
killer has never been in any kind of trouble with the law, and therefore he’s confident his fingerprints aren’t held on records anywhere. He knows he can’t be tracked down that
way.’

‘Sure! But when we catch him through other means we’ll get a match in about ten seconds and straight to Old Sparky he goes.’

‘
If
you catch him, you mean.
He
doesn’t believe you will. That’s the explanation for this, Lee. Like a lot of psychopaths, he’ll be a complete, raging
narcissist. He’s getting a huge kick out of taunting you by deliberately leaving his fingerprints behind. It’s classic catch-me-if-you-can behaviour.’

Foster looked distinctly put out. ‘Well, that’s no good to me, is it? If you’re right, these prints won’t be the slightest use in catching him until we’ve . . .
well, caught him, if you get me.’

She shook her head. ‘
Nil desperandum,
and all that. The fact that he’s arrogant and over-confident enough to play such a reckless game means, in itself, that he’s
vulnerable. That’s what I was referring to last night when I mentioned his Achilles heel. I need to do some thinking on this but we may have identified his chief weak point: hubris. We should
be able to play on it. Give me time.’

The FBI man stared at her.

‘You certainly think differently, I’ll give you that,’ he said at last. ‘But when we
do
get the cuffs on him, surely he’ll be sorry about the prints
then?’

For the first time in the conversation, Stella laughed. ‘Good God no!’ she replied. ‘Once he’s got over the shock of being arrested, he’ll want full credit for what
he’s done. I guarantee you he’ll plead guilty. He’s so proud of himself; of his ingenuity, his cunning.’

The FBI detective scratched his chin.

‘OK. So what does that make him? Crazy-clever, or crazy-stupid?’

Stella didn’t hesitate. ‘Oh, despite flawed behaviour and thinking resulting from excessive self-adoration I think he’s a very, very bright individual. I know you use the terms
blue-collar and white-collar worker over here.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I think he’s more likely to be blue-collar, but that doesn’t mean he’s not extremely clever. He’s a practical man, but instinctive and persuasive. He’s
probably quite charming, too. Charm is a common feature of the most dangerous psychopaths – I’m sorry, I’m sure you knew that already, Lee, I don’t mean to patronise –
and that’s how he’s managing to get these poor women to go off with him without a fuss. He’ll have some convincing cover story or other; I’ll bet he even manages to makes
them laugh, too. They’ll feel perfectly safe with him.’

He looked at her uncertainly. ‘You
know
all this, Stella?’

She shook her head. ‘Not exactly . . . but I do seem to have innate understanding about such things. Did that telegram from England mention the Edinburgh conference I attended in
May?’

He shook his head.

‘It was a three-day affair for psychiatrists and psychologists . . . I presented a paper on predictive behaviour. Anyway, on the last day they gave us an exercise in something quite new,
something called profiling. We were given details of six separate repeat-killer cases from Europe and America, with certain key information altered or withheld so we couldn’t identify them.
All the cases had been solved. We had to predict what the personality types of the murderers turned out to be.’

‘And?’

Stella looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Well,’ she said, hesitating, ‘the fact is that in each case I got the killer more or less bang to rights. Social background, approximate
age and IQ . . . there was one strangler who killed five women in Brussels before he was caught and I said he was probably a bus conductor and he
was
, Lee . . . and there was a poisoner in
Italy, I forget where exactly, who I
knew
would turn out to be a schoolmaster, and he was – a deputy head, actually.’

The detective whistled. ‘So I’m impressed. What do you think our man here in the Keys does for a living?’

She wrinkled her nose, surprised at the question. ‘Really? It’s obvious, surely . . . I mean, in a general sort of way, if you think about how he snares them and presumably bears
them off before he overpowers them.’

‘So enlighten me.’

She neatly stacked the files and slid them back into their envelope before replying.

‘Whatever it is, it’s definitely got something to do with cars.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Well, in every case, the victims’ cars have been locked, the keys are gone, and the girls have taken their things with them – handbags and so on. No signs of any kind of a
struggle. I think that gives us the basis for the reasonable belief they went willingly, even calmly. They remembered their things and they remembered to lock up.’

He nodded, disappointed. ‘I think all that’s already accepted, Stella. I don’t see what that’s got to do with—’

She gestured to him to be quiet. ‘I haven’t finished, Lee. We have to ask ourselves
why
four bright young girls would go off with a stranger like that, assuming he
was
a stranger. In most cases it would have been getting dark, too, which you’d think might add to their feelings of insecurity.’

She put her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers under her chin. ‘I’ve been trying to put together what would be necessary for each one of them to drop their guard so
completely.’

Stella began counting off on the fingers of her right hand.

‘One. He would have been very persuasive and reassuring. In other words, a charmer. That’s a classic psychopathic trait, as we said. But if he was doing the knight in shining armour
bit, why didn’t he offer to jack up the car and put on the spare? We can only theorise, of course, but he must have come up with a believable reason not to do that. Maybe he lied and told
them the spare was flat, or it was too dangerous to change the wheel in the dark, or the toolkit was missing. The point is, he must have demonstrated a lot of
authority.
They accepted
whatever he came up with at face value.’

‘Very good, Stella. But I still don’t see the car connection.’

‘I’m coming to that.’ Stella paused, frowning. ‘OK.
Two.
I think he didn’t just sound convincing; he
looked
convincing, too. I realise this is
extended conjecture, Lee, but my instincts are telling me I’m on the right track, they really are. I believe this man carried extra authority, especially on the subject of cars, because he
has something to do with them. Professionally, I mean.’

The FBI man stared at her intently. ‘Are you trying to say you think this guy could be cop? A patrol car officer?’

‘It’s possible. You should certainly examine the local police car patrol records for the four nights we’re talking about, see if there’s any kind of suspicious pattern.
But aren’t there two officers to each car?’

He nodded. ‘Usually, though not always. All the same, I’ll get it checked out. Go on.’

‘
Three.
I believe the clinching factor in the girls going off with him was something to do with the actual car he was in. It represented an added element of reassurance.
Presumably he offered to give them a lift home in it and clearly they were happy to climb in.’

She paused for a moment, thinking hard. Eventually she continued: ‘I said earlier that we’ve been assuming this man was a stranger, largely because there’s no known connection
between any of the victims. But what if they all
did
know him, even if only by sight? Or at the very least, were familiar with the car he was driving? Familiar enough with him or his
vehicle, or both, for all four girls to feel perfectly safe going off with him.

‘Which brings us to
four.
’

Stella took a deep breath.

‘I think he’s probably a local taxi driver.’

He awoke restless and distracted. Pages of Milton’s masterpiece lay scattered on the floor by his bed; the poem had done nothing to calm or comfort him the night
before.

The 7 a.m. thump of the rolled-up
Courier
thrown by the paperboy against his cottage’s screen door got him out of bed, but he was lethargic as he went to collect it. He
wouldn’t make page one today. He’d done nothing to earn it.

Five minutes later, he was pacing between his tiny studio kitchen and the TV lounge and back again in a tight figure of eight, the twin chicanes curving sharply at the Baby Belling stove at
one end of his compact home and the portable TV at the other.

He couldn’t recall being this excited. Not since the day he’d finally decided to act out the fantasies that had remorselessly consumed him for almost as long as he could
remember.

The
Courier
’s headline alone had almost arrested his heart and breathing. His hands had begun to tremble so badly that he’d had to lay the newspaper flat on the tiny
kitchen table so he could read the paragraphs beneath that glorious, glorious banner and accompanying photo.

An English rose, indeed.

For him.

Just for him!

And by order of the fucking President of the United States of America. This wasn’t a dream come true because he’d never had the audacity to imagine even for one second that such
a glittering reward would be his. And after less than a month’s work!

He forced himself to calm down and switched on the coffee percolator in the kitchenette. Only when he had a steaming mug of Colombia’s finest cupped between both hands did he return to
the
Courier
. Now, he read its astounding front-page story with meticulous attention.

He burst out laughing. What a joke. He studied the photo again. He’d recognised the picket fence and palm trees in the back of shot the moment he picked the paper off
the porch. The clincher was the fragment of clapboard building with wooden steps down to the beach that was visible on the extreme right of the picture. That was the hotel dining room. He’d
delivered and collected around a dozen or so fares there this year alone.

She was staying at Largo Lodge. He turned back to the closing paragraphs of the story.