One final duty.

20

New York, the present

Three days after Beverly Baker’s death, the Justice Killer sent Beam a letter, care of the NYPD, copy to The New York Times.

There it was in da Vinci’s sunny office, on da Vinci’s desk. Everyone in the office had read the note but not touched it. The brief message was neatly printed in pencil:

Hunter Beam:

I know about your exploits and what you have for breakfast and what you dream. It is my pleasure that you’ve been assigned to track me down. Great men are judged by the quality of their enemies. We need each other. God provides for the just.

You can no longer screw your wife. Are you screwing Officer Nell?

JK

“At least there’s one thing he doesn’t know about you,” Nell said.

Looper was sitting next to her, smiling. Beam was standing off to the side, his hands in his pockets. Da Vinci sat in his big black swivel chair behind his desk. The fifth person in the room was police profiler Helen Iman. She was a tall woman, athletically curvaceous and attractive, who would have looked right at home playing beach volleyball. She had slanted emerald eyes and the kind of bony, ageless features that would look the same at sixty. She was about twenty years shy of that now. She stood on the opposite side of the desk from Beam.

“We got us a madman for a perp,” Looper said, sitting back after reading the note.

“I think we can all agree on that,” da Vinci said.

“Techs looked at this yet?” Beam asked.

“Of course,” da Vinci said. “It didn’t take them long. There’s nothing in the way of prints that might be brought out on either the envelope or paper, and both are from stock sold in office supply stores, drugstores, and even grocery stores.”

“Any DNA?”

“No. Analysis of the envelope flap reveals no saliva. He didn’t lick it. A few microscopic cotton fibers were found, indicating he dampened a cloth and ran it across the adhesive areas. But the fibers are so common they lead nowhere.”

“What about the printing itself?” Beam asked.

“Handwriting analyst says it’s so carefully drawn and proportioned, maybe using a ruler or some other straight-edged object to maintain evenness, that it doesn’t reveal much. Certainly nothing that would bear meaningful comparison in court. Pencil’s number two lead, like ninety-nine percent of the pencils sold. A wooden pencil, probably, not mechanical. Lab says it didn’t wear down the same way as less tapered mechanical lead.”

Da Vinci turned the note paper so it was angled Helen Iman’s way. “Tell you anything about this guy?” he asked, “Like how tall he is, is he a Mets or Yankees fan, what’s his favorite color?”

Helen Iman admirably ignored da Vinci’s sarcasm. In her business it was the usual thing. Some cops, especially the older ones, or those in higher office like da Vinci, didn’t have much faith in profiling.

Helen moved nearer to the desk and looked closely, the second time, at the printed note.

“She’s gonna tell us everything about this guy,” da Vinci said with mock confidence, “including whether he wears boxers or Jockey shorts.”

Helen felt like telling da Vinci the killer wore shorts that were all twisted up like his own.

“He’s psychic,” she said. “He knows what Captain Beam dreams.”

Da Vinci glared at her, waiting for her to smile. She didn’t.

“What would be his reaction if I answered this note,” Beam asked the profiler, “and we get my reply printed in the Times?”

“He’d probably love a public display of your reply to his letter. It would make it seem the two of you were a set, acting out a drama on a vast stage. You might see this investigation as a job, but he sees it as an epic.”

“I’ll tell him I’m simply doing my job,” Beam said. “I’ve seen insane killers like him before and I will again. After he’s lost his freedom or his life, I’ll move on and he’ll be forgotten.”

Helen smiled. “He wouldn’t like reading something like that. Especially the mention of insanity.”

“Might it rattle him?”

“It might. I think he’ll almost immediately write an answer. He’d love to carry on a public correspondence with you.”

“I’ll tell him this will be the only message he’s going to get from me until I read him his rights.”

“Tell him again he’s a nutcase,” Looper suggested.

“Once is enough,” Helen said. She looked at da Vinci. “What do you think of the idea?”

“You’re the profiler,” he said. “What will it accomplish?”

“It’ll anger him. Maybe to the extent that he’ll make a mistake. And it will make him dislike Captain Beam all the more. And respect him all the more.”

“Will he fear him all the more?”

“Yes, but remember, he chose him because he feared him.”

“I’d like you to look over the letter before I send it,” Beam said to Helen. “If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Helen was gaining respect for Beam herself. If the Justice Killer had wanted a formidable opponent, he’d chosen well.

“Will it make him kill again?” Nell asked.

Helen shrugged. “It might make him kill sooner, but I doubt even that. He’s going to kill again one way or the other. He’s going to keep killing until he’s stopped. And he knows it. A certain part of him even wants to be stopped, because he knows he can’t stop himself. That’s why he’s happy to have Captain Beam in charge of the investigation. After six victims, the killer might be in the early stages of coming unraveled. He wants to be famous when he is caught or killed, and he knows he’s working toward that moment. He’s sure that in the end, Captain Beam won’t let him down.”

Da Vinci chortled and shook his head. “God! Is it really that complicated?”

Helen grinned as if she and da Vinci shared a secret. “Maybe not.”

“Madmen can be complicated,” Looper said.

“I’m not so sure he’s mad,” Helen said. “Not in the way we’re talking about—uncontrolled, irrational. That’s not what comes across to me in the note. He’s more like someone pretending to be mad.”

“Laying the basis for an insanity defense when he’s caught?” Nell asked.

“Possibly. Or maybe he’s simply playing for effect.”

“Killer like that’s already a leg up on an insanity plea,” Looper said.

“If he’s only pretending to be irrational,” Beam said.

Helen looked at him and nodded. “It’s true that at this point we can’t know for sure, but my hunch is that he’s feigning insanity.”

“I know six people who’d disagree with you,” da Vinci said, “if they could.”

Martin Portelle liked to ride the subway to and from work. Not that he couldn’t afford a cab. For that matter he might have twisted somebody’s arm and gotten a company car to drive him back and forth. He was at that level, since the report he’d made on Sculler Steel, a small foundry in the Midwest that had the potential of increasing top line earnings by fifty percent with only a few minor operational changes.

He wished he were paid a commission on all the money he’d saved his company. He might be the firm’s highest paid employee. Mr. Kravers had referred to him more than once as its most talented. Martin could spot, in corporate financial statements, anomalies that other analysts’ attention glided over. It was as if they were half blind and he had perfect vision.

Besides knowing how to squeeze a dollar, that was Martin’s great gift, perceiving anomalies however slight. Which was why over the past several days he’d become increasingly worried.

More than worried, actually—spooked.