I looked up when I heard the booming voice of Victor Kuehne, a precinct detective who’d been in and out of our office for the last couple of weeks, working with one of our homicide detectives on a case unrelated to ours. Kuehne was known for his gregarious personality and off-color jokes. He was both loved and hated throughout the department.
He was also known for picking on detectives. And enjoying it. I thought he was a bully. Now he turned on Hollis.
“Hollis, man, are you hiding a nose job from us? That bandage seems like it’s been on your face a long time.”
I opened my mouth to explain that it had been only a couple of days but decided to let Hollis speak for himself.
He didn’t, just smiled and shook his head.
Kuehne wasn’t deterred. “Didn’t you graduate from NYU before you hit the Police Academy? What are you doing, bucking to make chief before you’ve even gotten your hands dirty?”
Hollis still didn’t take the bait.
“Lay off, Kuehne,” I said. “He’s working on a real case. If you’re not careful, we’ll get you assigned to it and stick you with a thousand crank leads.”
Bullies are rarely interested in dealing with someone who stands up to them. Kuehne was no exception. He didn’t say another word as he turned toward the desk he’d been using.
A moment later, Hollis stepped over to my desk and sat in an empty chair. He said, “I appreciate your concern, but I can handle myself. You stepping to my defense just convinces that moron he was right about me. He already thinks I’m not tough enough to be a cop. Now he thinks I’m not even tough enough to defend myself.”
He wasn’t wrong. All I could do was nod my head and say, “Understood.”
What I should have said was that I’d never seen a detective make a tougher run at a fleeing suspect than Hollis had with Billy Van Fleet, but the moment had passed.
A few minutes later, Kuehne strolled by our desks. He considered Hollis for a moment, then finally said, “So tell me, is the nose job just to cover the fact that you got a small pecker?”
Hollis didn’t bother looking up from his report. He said in an easy tone, “Your mom didn’t mind it last night.”
I didn’t even try to hide my grin.
Hollis was right. Kuehne walked away, satisfied with Hollis’s proper burn.
I glanced again at the San Francisco crime-scene photos I’d gotten in. The photos showed two messy scenes that looked eerily similar to the ones I’d been at recently here in New York. The savagely murdered victims, both slashed around the neck, face, and eyes—and the excessive amount of blood deliberately splashed around the rooms.
I reviewed the case file of one of the victims, a thirty-year-old tech worker who had lived alone in an apartment not far from Fisherman’s Wharf. I flipped to a photo of her living room and noticed that lined up on her mantel were tiny figurines of ballerinas and musicians. Several were pushed to one side, then a gap, and then two more figurines. Interesting.
The separation between the two groups of figurines reminded me of the similar detail at Elaine Anastas’s apartment—those bloody bobbleheads.
Was there a connection?
Chapter 24
Daniel Ott realized the potential risk in stalking the young librarian who’d spoken to him in the computer room in the New York Public Library.
He had only recently killed Elaine, the intern. Normally he’d pause between victims. But he felt pressed to eliminate a witness who might be able to identify him in the future.
He decided achieving that goal outweighed the risk.
Ott was surprised not to have had an instant response to the email he’d sent. It was the most daring action he’d ever taken in relation to his hobby. Although he recognized the hypocrisy between creating a meticulous crime scene and then taunting the police in private and public ways, Ott couldn’t explain why he had done it. Maybe it was because they were too stupid to understand how clever he was.
He had already decided the librarian needed to go, so it was easy to forget the fact that he had rarely killed like this before, without preparing his crime-scene rituals and messages.
It hadn’t been difficult to figure out which door the library staff used to exit their shifts. He got lucky in spotting the young woman after only about twenty minutes of waiting near the door.
He followed her from the library. She seemed to be a cheerful, friendly young woman. Either that or she knew an inordinate number of people. She waved and nodded hello to dozens of people in the space of three blocks. She was wearing jeans and a plain blouse, nothing remarkable, so he had to keep her long, straight black hair constantly in sight.
Ott found that the longer he followed the girl, the more she intrigued him. He appreciated how she stopped to help an elderly man struggling to get his walker over a curb. She stayed with the man until he entered a McDonald’s halfway down the block.
Ott glanced around the street and didn’t see many pedestrians. A taxi whizzed by, none of the passengers paying any attention.
All he needed was a quiet moment when no one was around. Just a quick blade through the throat or the chest and then he could walk away.
He thought he’d found that opportunity when she stopped to make a phone call almost twenty minutes after he’d started following her from the library. From half a block away, Ott watched her pace back and forth across an alley. He felt his pulse quicken. He slipped a surgical glove over his right hand as he made his way along the sidewalk, reaching into his tool pouch to pull out the Gerber folding knife.
He’d already decided to step up behind her and slice her throat horizontally. She would make noise and her blood would spill onto the street, but he didn’t care what kind of mess he made if they were alone. The messier the better was his usual attitude anyway. He imagined she would just crawl into the alley and thrash around until she was dead. With luck, no one would even notice her body for a while.
He came close enough to hear her voice as she talked on the phone. The same voice she had used to reprimand him. He was almost sorry there wouldn’t be time for one of his dedicated rituals.
He zeroed in on her. The librarian was facing away from him, chatting away and not paying any attention to her surroundings. Perfect.
Just as he stepped into the alley, he heard more voices. Three men dressed in white were sitting on folding chairs behind a restaurant’s back exit. They were cooks, laughing and talking on a break.
All three men glanced up at him. He closed the knife and slipped it back into his pouch. Ott tried to alter his course and casually stepped back onto the sidewalk. He walked quickly out of their sight before he paused for a moment and took a breath.
About thirty seconds later, the young librarian strolled past him without paying any attention at all.
He had missed his best opportunity.
Chapter 25
Daniel Ott followed the young librarian another block until she turned and stepped into a Subway sandwich shop. The chain was the gold standard for people in a hurry or students without much money. Basic nutrition without a lot of flavor. It wasn’t the flashiest business plan, but they seemed to be doing okay.
Ott was a little confused about what to do next. After feeling his excitement rise when he thought he could reach the librarian in the alley, he had calmed down.