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She wore a bathrobe over a sheer nightgown. Blood stained the front of her garments. The stab wound indicated that a blow from a sharp instrument had struck very close to her heart. There was also a puddle of blood and fluid near the right side of her face.
Jackson said, “This scene isn’t nearly as bad as the one on 30th, but like that poor vic, this one’s also been stabbed in the eye. That’s why I figured it was connected to our serial killer.”
I glanced around the apartment, careful not to touch anything. I looked down at the victim again, realizing she had been stabbed in the right eye, like Marilyn Shaw. And this apartment was less of a hellscape than some of the others, more like the scene on Staten Island. Not much seemed to have been disturbed beyond the murder victim.
So now we had four victims who’d been stabbed in the left eye and two stabbed in the right. Was I placing too much emphasis on which side the killer chose?
I continued to walk carefully around the apartment. Jackson followed as I explained the working theory Hollis and I had come up with after our examination of the previous scenes in the other cities. About how the killer arranged objects to keep count of his victims. No matter how hard Jackson and I looked, though, we didn’t find any of those markers here.
Are Hollis and I on the wrong track? What the hell does this mean?
Chapter 57
Daniel Ott found an internet café in Midtown Manhattan. The little spot served coffee and stale pastries at high prices in exchange for the privilege of signing on to their lightning-fast Wi-Fi. On a busy day, the place resembled a fancy communal diner, the café’s three long tables crowded with as many as fifteen customers, mostly younger people with lots of piercings and tattoos.
Ott used a VPN—a virtual private network—to conceal his identity and location after logging on to the Wi-Fi. It might’ve been overkill, but given his internet research, Ott didn’t want to risk anyone accessing his online history from this café.
He hadn’t finished his research on Detective Michael Bennett. At the library, he’d found out that the Bennett children went to a Catholic school called Holy Name on the Upper West Side. Ott hacked into the faculty chat room, where the most popular topic of conversation was Michael Bennett’s getting married!
Now, this was a pleasant surprise. Finally, a personal commitment guaranteed to take Bennett’s mind off the case. Ott took a few handwritten notes rather than risk saving any of the hacked links to his computer. He had no real plan just yet. But he trusted one would come.
Just as Ott reached for his overpriced, bitter coffee, a muscular young man in a black T-shirt and baggy black pants turned to him. Ott tried to decipher the tattoos curling around the man’s neck and up his face but couldn’t tell what any of them meant.
The tattooed man said, “Yo, dude, nice computer. Why don’t you let us use it for a little bit?”
One of the man’s tablemates, a scrawny young guy about six feet tall, added, “I promise we’ll only keep it for a couple of days.” The three girls they were with all laughed at his wit.
Ott didn’t think this was funny at all. He hated men like this, almost as much as he hated arrogant American women. He decided the best course of action was to ignore them, and purposely focused his attention back on the screen of his tricked-out Lenovo laptop.
The tattooed man wouldn’t leave it alone. He stepped in close to Ott. “I was trying to be nice. Let it seem like you were being generous by giving us your computer. Now I’m just going to take it.” He reached for the laptop.
As he did, Ott casually drove the point of his steel tactical pen straight through the middle of the man’s hand, pinning it to the wooden table. The tattooed man’s eyes popped wide and he gasped.
Ott said in a low voice, “Shout or do anything stupid and this pen goes into your throat. Do you understand?”
The man barely nodded. He was so scared he couldn’t even reach across to pull the pen out of his hand. Ott did it for him with one quick jerk. A tiny spout of blood shot into the air and landed back on the man’s hand.
Ott said, “Usually my lessons in manners are more severe and intensive. Did this one do the trick? Are you going to bother people you don’t know anymore?”
The tattooed man shook his head.
Ott pulled a wad of napkins off the short stack directly in front of him. He handed it to the man, who wrapped it around his hand. Ott calmly used another napkin to wipe up the blood on the table.
Ott said, “Gather your friends quietly and leave. Right now. If I have to deal with you again, you’re going to lose an eye. Understand?”
The man nodded again and did just as he was told. He turned to his friends, cleared his throat, and said, “Let’s go.”
One of the girls said, “I’m not done yet.”
The tattooed man snatched her coffee off the table and they all followed him out the door.
Daniel Ott felt very satisfied with himself.
Chapter 58
To a cop in the middle of a serial killer investigation, sleep is a precious commodity. Which is why I felt frustrated when I sensed a movement near my feet that dragged me out of my dream. I mumbled Mary Catherine’s name. Then I heard a man’s voice. What the hell?
I sprang up, completely disoriented. I wasn’t in my bed. I wasn’t even in my bedroom. I shook my head, then rubbed my eyes. I felt like a toddler waking up from a nap, unsure of where I was.
