“That doesn’t explain why you killed the young man,” I said.
“He was there.” Ott shrugged. “I tried to do a quick job in front of the apartment building since there were people nearby, so I slashed her across her throat and intended to keep walking. Then that guy came out of the building at the wrong time and saw her dead body. I had to kill him too. I had no choice.”
There’s always a choice, I wanted to say, but someone like Ott would never understand.
“And the bartender from The Queen’s Castle?” I asked, referring to the incident report I had been handed as I entered the interview room.
“My latest victim,” Ott said with a fearsome smile. “How I did enjoy her, once she stopped talking.”
This story was getting sicker and sicker, but I had mostly known the answers to the questions I had been asking Ott. I was about to forge into unknown territory.
“What about the murder on Staten Island?”
“Staten Island?” he said. “I’ve never even been there.”
“You had nothing to do with the stabbing of Marilyn Shaw in her apartment?” I said, showing Ott a picture of the murder victim.
He leaned back like we were old friends having a beer after work. “That must’ve been the one I read about in the paper. I have enjoyed reading about myself, but you know as well as I do that the media is wrong most of the time. It should have been obvious I wasn’t the Staten Island killer.”
I took my time writing some notes. I needed to think about this. I wanted him to think about it too.
I asked him about the SoHo homicide, which was another one he hadn’t confessed to. “What about Lila Stein in SoHo?” Again, I displayed a photo of the victim.
He shook his head. “Not me.”
I looked at Ott, trying to get a feel for him. Here was a guy who had freely admitted to committing half a dozen murders in the city. Plus more across the country that he’d done throughout the past decade. I had to dig deeper.
“In your letter to the New York Daily News,” I said, “you wrote, ‘Think of the one who has killed the most. I am better than him.’ Who is that?”
“The person who killed those two women was trying to copy me,” Ott said. “Everyone should copy the master, the one who has killed the most. The Butcher of Rostov. The Red Ripper. I learned his ways when I was a young man, working for my first employer.”
Ott’s confession had been flowing, then suddenly he’d turned cryptic. My mind flashed on the prolific serial killers Ott had been tracking. Little. Bundy. Chikatilo.
I took an educated guess. “Andrei Chikatilo.”
Ott looked surprised and pleased. “You know the master’s name.”
But there was more I had to know.
“You took the blood of your victims and mixed it with blood at fresh crime scenes,” I said. “You haven’t been home for more than six weeks. Where is the blood of your New York victims?”
“The blood vials I collected here are in sealed plastic bags inside a can falsely labeled shaving cream. You can find it in my hotel room. The others are in a safe in my home office. I wouldn’t want my girls getting into them.”
I couldn’t resist asking, “Why do you mutilate the women’s left eyes?”
“That’s simple. I stand over them, and they’re completely in my control. The last sight they see is my face.”
Internally, I was reeling with horror, but I couldn’t stop the interview.
“Did you push a woman in front of a bus near our office?”
“By the elevated train?”
I nodded, already knowing the response.
“I meant to shove the detective with the broken nose. He tried to be a hero and lost.”
I had to move off the subject before I got too angry and did something stupid. I simmered for a minute. I was too wound up that Ott had made Hollis his target. That he had known about my kids, about Mary Catherine and our wedding. I couldn’t focus.
But there was one more question I had to ask. “Why did you sign your letter ‘Bobby Fisher’?”
Before Ott could answer, I heard voices outside the door. Loud voices. Arguing.
Chapter 96
The sounds outside the interview room brought even Daniel Ott up short.
Someone bumped against the door. This was more than an argument. This was a scuffle. Then I heard Harry Grissom’s voice. He was regaining order.
I stood up and gestured for Ott to stay seated. I walked across the small interview room and popped open the door. I stuck my head out into the hallway with the idea of shouting, Keep it down!
Instead, I was shocked into silence at the sight of Harry and a precinct captain named Jefferson squaring off with several extremely well-dressed people, including Robert Lincoln, the assistant special agent in charge of the New York FBI office.
How did they even know we made an arrest? Are they trying to physically steal our suspect?
What I said was “Hey, what’s going on?” My voice sounded remarkably calm, especially considering my confusion.
Emily Parker stepped through the pack of people. She looked at Harry as if she was trying to calm down an angry lion. Then she turned to me. “We have a federal warrant for your suspect, Daniel Ott.”
I stepped out into the hall and shut the interview room door behind me. “You worked a separate case on him? Without even talking to me?”
“Mike, it’s not what you think.”
It was Harry Grissom who spoke next. “I think it’s bullshit. This is just some kind of stupid FBI ploy. They’re claiming this mope is a spy.”
I twisted my face as I looked at Emily.
She nodded.
A spy? That’s why Emily had been stalling the help she’d promised me. She was after a bigger prize.
The world seemed to be spinning too quickly. I’d had my run-ins with the FBI over the years. I’d cracked a lot of jokes about the federal agency. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought they were capable of taking control of a suspect who was in the midst of confessing to multiple homicides. The only real question I had was if they had fabricated an excuse to steal my suspect, or if they’d specifically withheld information and waited for the right time to screw up my case.
It was Robert Lincoln who took advantage of my shock. He stepped forward and slipped into the interrogation room so smoothly, I barely even noticed him sliding past me.
I stepped back into the room as well. Ott didn’t acknowledge anything unusual going on.
Lincoln looked at him and said, “You’re Daniel Ott, correct?”
He nodded.
“I’m Robert Lincoln with the FBI. You’re in the custody of the NYPD, but I have a federal warrant. It has nothing to do with the homicides Detective Bennett has been questioning you about.”
Ott said quietly, “I’ve been expecting you. My previous employer must have sent you.”
“And who would that be?”
“The Russian government.”
I stepped between him and the FBI ASAC. I turned to the FBI ASAC and said, “What the hell are you talking about? What’s your warrant for?”
The athletic, well-dressed man smiled. “Espionage. He came to the US about twelve years ago working for the Russian government. They lost track of him almost a decade ago. And so did we. But now we finally have him.”