‘Weren’t you making sheep’s eyes at me, Jessica? Didn’t you flash that smile at the church? Didn’t you invite me up here? What were you anticipating? A nice Baptist girl like yourself. Girls like you look like butter wouldn’t melt, but then here we are - and all on a first date. You know what that makes you?’

She shook her head.

‘A whore, Jessica.’

The killer felt a twinge. They were locked in her apartment. It was many hours before dawn and there were things he wanted to do that she would not consent to.

Jessica was just realizing that she didn’t know him at all. He’d come on to her at the Baptist church, smiled, made her laugh out loud.

As she stared, still holding her glass, he put a hand to his inside pocket. He took out a brown leather case. He opened the popper and pulled out a small old-fashioned switchblade with a black handle and a small curved blade. He opened it and looked at her.

‘There was a double murder back in the sixties in an apartment just like this one. Two college girls. Don’t know what happened exactly. I mean, the autopsy showed what had happened - the killer had stabbed one of the girls sixty-three times. Can you imagine that? Sixty-three times. And they weren’t rapid, violent stabs. No, siree, these were slow and considered. He pushed the knife in real carefully. They think he was watching her face as he did it. You know, like he was interested to see what happened? You know what they call people like that, Jessica?’

Jessica’s voice trembled. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘They call them sadists because they enjoy other people’s pain. Sadist. Do you know where the word sadist comes from, Jessica?’

She shook her head. Her knuckles were white on her glass. Her eyes were rimmed with red. She knew she mustn’t cry, but she kept sniffing and the glass was now trembling.

‘From a French gentleman called the Marquis de Sade who enjoyed inflicting pain on his lovers and anyone else for that matter. But the young man who was operating that night wasn’t just an over-enthusiastic lover, Jessica - he was something else entirely. Sixty-three times. In and out, that’s one hundred and twenty-six individual movements. In and out.’

Jessica was praying now. She was hoping her prayers could somehow help her as they had always done before. Help me, Lord Jesus.

‘Seriously. Is that sick or what?’ The killer breathed deeply. ‘Do you think, Jessica, that he was enjoying the sensation? Why do you think he stopped? Do you think he got excited watching the knife go in and out?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you scared, Jessica?’

‘Yes, I’m scared.’

‘What do you say, Jessica? Would you like to go to bed with me now or have you changed your mind?’

She shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’

‘I think that’s a wise choice. I don’t think you’d like it at all.’

The man stood up and walked over to her; he flicked open the top button of her blouse. A small silver crucifix caught the light.

‘Do you believe in God, Jessica?’

She nodded.

‘Do you think he’d come and save one of his own if she needed his help?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How about we test him out? Or do you think it’s wrong to tempt him?’

‘Please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I’ve done,’ she said, the tears now falling.

The man moved to the door. ‘Be careful who you invite into your home, Jessica.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will be.’

‘You know what might save you?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe God. Let’s see, shall we?’

The man turned and unbolted the three bolts on the door. Then he opened it and stood there.

‘Today’s special number is sixty-three. You think you can count to sixty-three? Count to sixty-three before you move and you can go free. God has sixty-three seconds to save you. And you just need sixty-three seconds of faith. Do you have that much faith?’

Jessica nodded and the killer smiled. He didn’t really think she’d get past five or six, but he wanted to give her a chance. Everyone deserved a chance - even God.

He walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar. Jessica sat and suddenly started to shake uncontrollably. She counted as she stared at the door.

‘One, two, three, four ...’

But she kept imagining that the door would fly open and he’d return.

‘Five . . .’

She felt so vulnerable.

‘Six.’

So scared, so terribly scared. It was too much. She was terrified. Suddenly, she ran at the door and closed it with the full force of her body. Her trembling hand reached for the dead bolt.

But she wasn’t quite quick enough. Or strong enough.

The door burst open and Jessica fell to the floor, her wet, terrified eyes staring up. He was back. Not the bright, witty guy she’d met at church, but a sinister figure weaving the curled edge of the knife in the air.

‘They call me the American Devil, Jessica. Do you want to know why? I want you to call out my name. I want to hear you say it.’

Jessica did as she was told, but the words trembled on her lips.

‘You only had to do what I told you and you’d live. Faith is hard, isn’t it? It was that simple, but you couldn’t resist, could you?’

He took her by an ankle and pulled her towards the centre of the room.

‘Shall we start counting again, Jessica?’ he said. ‘Let’s see what we can get to. But this time, each number comes with a price.’ He put the point of the blade against the sole of her foot.

‘One,’ he said, loud and firm as the point of the knife pressed into her flesh.

She closed her eyes and wished for an angel.

None arrived.

Chapter Twenty

East Harlem

November 19, 5.58 A.M.

Either someone was putting something in his coffee or Harper woke up feeling better after his first two sessions with Denise. In truth, he had unloaded almost nothing of his feelings about Lisa, but it was enough just to hear Denise put them in some kind of order. He liked her hard edge and her lack of sentimentality. Maybe that was exactly what he needed.

From his drab apartment he looked out on the new day. The morning was grey all the way across the city and a light rain was falling. Harper was up before first light and at 6 a.m. headed out to Central Park with his binoculars. He needed to spend a simple hour in the park. It was the walking that did it: somehow it released his mind and got him thinking. The American Devil was interacting with his victims, and had been for years. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, he started to kill. There was nothing similar on the Federal database. Why did a man start to kill? What was it about Mary-Jane that triggered this terrible spree?

Harper walked along the wet street and ran the thought over and over in his mind. Maybe he hadn’t intended to kill her? The killer was in her room, wasn’t he? Maybe he was there before Mary-Jane. Yeah, he thought, it just might be. He’d have to look at the case information, see if his idea had any weight. He looked up. Even early in the morning, the poor of Harlem seemed to leak out of the pores of the city. Harper stopped in a doorway and looked down on a woman in her fifties, lying on her side underneath a hard sheet of cardboard. She was wearing a pair of old tennis shoes without socks and her legs were swollen and glowing with a bluish tinge. Harper knelt down beside her and put his hand on her forehead. There was still heat under the skin. She wasn’t dead, just right next door. Harper stood up and walked on. Then he stopped and turned back. He walked across and put a couple of twenties into the woman’s hand. It was a cold day: the weather had turned again.

Eddie Kasper was walking up the block and caught sight of Harper leaning over the homeless woman. He shook his head and shouted up the street, ‘Why don’t you leave the poor woman to sleep? If you want a date, Tom, I can sort you out.’