‘Sorry, guys, that’s all we have. We will all miss a cynical old bastard, a good friend and a great cop. Nothing to add. We’ve got a lot of police work to do to find out what happened. Dismissed.’

Lafayette left a silent hall stunned and confused.

Directly after the briefing, Lafayette called the Blue Team together. He had already told his close associates an hour before the briefing and they’d had time to absorb the horrific truth that the American Devil had gone after one of their own.

Tom Harper was devastated by the news, but he didn’t show it to the other guys. The false profile had been his idea. He had forced it through and now Nate Williamson was dead, cut down outside his own home. He looked each of them in the eye solemnly as they listened to Lafayette going through the next steps. Then Lafayette turned to Harper. Harper was feeling bruised by his own guilt, but most of all he felt angry. He’d watched Nate walk away from the scene with his head bowed. He could have gone after him. He stared back at Lafayette.

‘Detective Harper, we need you to step up to the plate on this. I want you as the lead. Nate would’ve wanted it too. I know what you must be feeling, but bottle it. This guy has killed six people, none of which is anybody’s fault but his. Listen to me, Harper, I want you to take this bastard down for all of us. What do you say?’

Harper moved his weight from one foot to the other. He wasn’t worthy of it. He gritted his teeth and looked up. ‘I’ll do it if the team wants me to, otherwise you gotta find another guy.’

Lafayette looked around the room, and each member of Blue Team nodded the signal that it was okay by them. ‘Okay, I’m in,’ said Harper. ‘Let’s get to work. He’s a cop-killer now: we’re all targets.’

Chapter Thirty-Six

Blue Team

November 21, 1.00 p.m.

Lead Detective Tom Harper knocked back his fifth cup of strong black coffee. He hadn’t slept at all since he walked in on Elizabeth Seale’s still-warm corpse and now he didn’t want to sleep. Williamson had been dead less than twelve hours and someone needed to focus the investigation. There were so many people involved now, the leads were in danger of getting lost in the mass of detail.

‘We can count on this being private until tomorrow morning,’ said Harper to Captain Lafayette and Eddie Kasper. ‘Then, if she’s true to form, Erin Nash will tell the world that the American Devil took out the lead detective.’

‘You want us to put the frighteners on her, Tom?’ said Eddie.

‘I tried that and she doesn’t frighten easy. I think I might have even strengthened her resolve. But maybe we could try to get the DA to agree to get her put under surveillance. What do you think, Captain?’

‘You want the District Attorney to agree to the NYPD spying on journalists? Are you out of your mind?’

‘Look, Captain, did you read her account of Elizabeth Seale’s murder? It’s just gone up on the website. She’s got everything. She knows about the false arrest in the wrong apartment and another piece of information that we only got back from the autopsy this morning.’

‘What was that?’

‘That the killer took another trophy. Elizabeth Seale’s uterus had been removed from the body.’

‘I didn’t know. How the hell did she get that information?’

‘Only Blue Team and the Medical Examiner’s office knew that her uterus was taken,’ said Harper.

‘You think it’s someone on the team?’ asked Lafayette.

‘I’d hate to think that, but where else? And if not, then we’ve got to pin her source down. Can’t you do anything at all, Captain?’

‘After what you tried with her, you’re lucky we’re not facing a lawsuit. Her editor made it clear that he’ll run with a harassment and assault suit if Erin gets any more heat.’

‘It was self-defence,’ said Harper.

‘Always is with you, but even if they make the complaint, you’re out. You made her untouchable.’

Harper shot looks between them both. ‘Look, if the DA won’t sanction it, Eddie, how about you see what you can get done unofficially.’

‘Will do, boss.’

‘And one more thing, Captain. Can you at least get us some peace? Guys are getting hammered as they go in and out of the building. The press have been camping outside since Erin Nash called this guy a serial killer. Now we’ve got news crews running hourly updates. If I’ve got a grimace on my face, they’ll report it.’

‘I can move them away from the building, but it’s a free country.’

‘Well, get them across the street, at least. Give our guys a chance.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Harper had been sifting through the files for an hour and he wasn’t at all impressed with Williamson’s approach to systematic logging and filing of case information. In fact, the dead man’s approach stank. Harper could see what was wrong immediately. Due to the speed of the kills, each murder hadn’t been fully investigated and the information hadn’t been cross-referenced with any of the other victims or even logged centrally. Williamson was leaving too much to chance and old-fashioned thinking. This all meant that they were walking blind through the case, hoping to stumble on something. With Harper in the lead spot, it had to be different.

At 1.15 p.m. Tom Harper called the investigation team together for a briefing. Along with the core members of Blue Team, he had over a hundred detectives working the case, but he only wanted his top people. He had six members of Blue Team, another six members of Manhattan North, four detectives drafted in from Manhattan South, and another six from the precinct detective squads. These experienced homicide detectives made up his core team. Along with his administrative team, there were twenty-five faces looking up at him, all angry and expectant.

‘Good morning to you all. I’m Detective Harper and this is Detective Kasper. Nate Williamson was a good cop and he didn’t deserve to die. So we’ve got to nail this creep for Nate. We’re here to take down the American Devil, but we’re not going to do it unless we’re organized. So far, as far as we know, this guy has killed five women in New York and one cop. Around the room, we’ve got five boards. I’m putting a team of six detectives on each woman. I need their lives fully investigated. We’ve got another team working Williamson’s murder. I want to know everything these women did for the last month of their lives. I want to know every person they spoke to, every phone call they made, every shop they visited. I want a moment-by-moment account with nothing left out. I want to see photographs and names of their boyfriends, dates, family, and friends. I want their computer records searched. I want everything back here. This killer has been interacting with them and he will have left traces.

‘So listen up, we will work two systems. The boards for all the visuals and key incidents, people and places. The database for absolutely everything. Every name, number, location and event. We’re working six different murders here, gentlemen, and it’ll be easy to miss something, but the computer won’t. It’ll flag up any similarities. Got that? The boards for basic facts, key leads and suspects, the database for everything. All clear?’

The room nodded its approval. Harper continued. ‘Secondly, I’m putting three teams, round the clock, to respond to information from the public. I don’t want to be swamped by this shit and I don’t want to miss anything. Again, all names, numbers, details logged and cross-referenced to crime scene details - if anyone is authentic it should flag it up. We meet every day to give a brief report, we see what the computer flags up and we see if anything on the boards throws up an idea. We haven’t been doing the ground work, gentlemen, and it’s not good enough. He’s one man, we’re many. We’ve got over a thousand hours a day of detective time pouring into this case, so let’s not waste any of it.