Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

“Elizabeth Hardy, age thirty-one, a nurse working at Sebago Hospital. Found murdered at her home. Strangled—”

“With a pair of tights,” Alice guessed.

Keyne nodded.

Alice’s heart began to race, but she tried to channel her emotions. It might be the same MO as Vaughn’s, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was the same criminal.

“After the murder,” Keyne went on, “we checked the ViCAP database—without luck. I shouldn’t tell you this, but we have hackers capable of getting into the databases of European police computers: the ViCLAS in Germany, the SALVAC in France.”

“I hope you’re joking!”

“Don’t look so outraged—we do what we have to do. Anyway, that’s how I found out about the series of murders and attacks committed by Erik Vaughn in Paris from November 2010 to November 2011.”

“And you made the connection?”

“I arranged a meeting with your boss, the director of the Criminal Division.”

“Mathilde Taillandier?”

“I was supposed to meet her next week in Paris, but first I went to Ireland. I checked the international database and found another murder that had been committed eight months earlier in Dublin.”

“Same victim profile, same signature?”

“Mary McCarthy, age twenty-four, a student in her junior year at Trinity College. Found strangled with a pair of tights in her room on campus.”

“And you think it’s Vaughn?”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“They lost track of Vaughn in Paris after you were attacked. Since then, he’s been like a ghost. The French police have made no progress at all on the case.”

“So?”

“Let me tell you what I think. Vaughn is a chameleon killer, capable of changing his identity whenever he feels threatened. I think he left Paris a long time ago, stopped over in Ireland for a while, and is now in the U.S.”

“All that just because you have two murders with apparently similar MOs?”

“They’re not similar—they’re exactly the same.”

“Oh, come on. Vaughn isn’t the first killer to strangle his victims with a pair of tights!”

“Don’t play dumb, Schafer. Vaughn killed each of those women with the previous victim’s hose. That’s what makes the signature his, as you already know.”

“And your first victim in Maine, what was she strangled with?”

“A pair of pink-and-white tights. The same tights the Irish student was wearing the day she died!”

“You’re jumping the gun. Your killer in Ireland or in the States is just a copycat. An accomplice. A straw man. Some sort of admirer who reproduces the crimes in minute detail.”

“You think so? Copycat killers are all over the movies and TV shows, but in fifteen years as a cop, I’ve never come across one. They don’t exist in reality.”

“Of course they do! The New York Zodiac killer, the Hance case—”

He lifted his hand up to interrupt her. “Those cases are thirty years old. They’re in all the criminology manuals.”

Alice would not let it drop.

“I thought the FBI was more thorough than this. Do you always charge blindly at every red flag people wave at you?”

Gabriel lost his temper. “Listen, I was going to spare you, Alice, but if you want irrefutable proof, I have it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You know what kind of tights the young Irish girl was strangled with?”

“Go on.”

“A pair of lace pregnancy tights, with a blue-green pattern. The pair you were wearing two years ago when Vaughn almost killed you.”

A silence. This revelation sent a chill down her spine. The police had never revealed that detail to the press. How could any copycat have known about those tights?

She massaged her temples. “Okay, let’s say it’s true. What’s your theory?”

“I think Vaughn wanted to take us on. That’s why he brought us together. And the fact that we found one of his prints certainly supports that theory. You, first of all, the French cop who knew him best after tracking him so relentlessly. You, whose unborn child he killed. You, with all your anger and your hatred for him. And then me: the FBI agent in charge of the investigation that identified him in the States. Two of us against him, determined to catch him but each with our own flaws and demons—two people who have suddenly gone from being the hunter to the hunted.”

Alice considered this possibility with a mixture of dread and excitement. There was something terrifying about the idea.

“Whether Vaughn is behind these killings or not, he must have a protégé or an accomplice,” she said. “Last night, you were in Dublin and I was in Paris. He had to get us both on a plane somehow, and the guy can’t be everywhere.”

“Agreed.”

Alice held her head in her hands. The case had taken an unexpected twist that, for the past few hours, had stirred up trauma and pain she had been wrestling with for years.

“One thing bothers me, Keyne. Why did you wait all this time to tell me who you are?”

“Because I had to find out more about you, about your involvement in this case and your motivations. Most important, I had to gather enough information to make it impossible for the Bureau to take me off the case. And, just between you and me, I hate being humiliated. And last night someone definitely got the jump on me.”

“But why pretend to be a jazz pianist?”

“It just popped into my head. I’ve always liked jazz, and Kenny, my best friend, really is a saxophone player.”

“So what do you suggest we do now?”

“First we go to the hematology lab on the Upper East Side to drop off a sample of the blood from your blouse. The Bureau works with that lab often. They’re incredibly expensive, but they have the best equipment and staff. They should be able to get us a genetic profile within two hours.”

“Good idea. And then what?”

“We drive to Boston, get our stories straight, go to the field office, and tell them everything we know. And we pray that they don’t take me off the investigation.”

Watching Gabriel, she noticed that his appearance had changed since his real identity was revealed. The jovial jazz pianist had given way to a serious cop. His look was darker, his features harder,